It's no secret that a big part of Chichibu's success has been that the distillery has put out way more private releases than their own distillery bottlings, or OBs.

As the first Japanese craft distillery to break the mold after a decades dearth of action in the Japanese whisky scene - it certainly required Chichibu to take on a strategy that would allow the distillery to operate sustainably and hence many of its early casks went into private bottlings. As the distillery became so successful and in demand, there was hardly enough for the distillery itself to maintain a core range of whiskies, the last new major bottling being Chichibu "The First Ten" which appeared in late 2020. In 2022, there was a "The Peated" release as part of the distillery's ongoing series of the same name.

Chichibu's founder Ichiro Akuto. 

Of course, in recent times, Chichibu has sought to mitigate this problem by having created a second distillery, Chichibu 2, which would add significant output to the distillery, albeit still relatively small compared to many other commercially larger brands' distilleries. Nonetheless, the second distillery was only completed in late 2019, and so much of the whisky produced there is still relatively young, although could potentially make its way into Chichibu releases already, being potentially 3 years old.

Hence, it is with palpable excitement that we discovered what looks to be a rare instance of a new distillery bottling from Chichibu - the Chichibu Red Wine Cask 2023!

Given that we only have the labels at the moment, all we can tell so far is that the new release will see an outturn of 11,800 bottles, which is fairly significant (read: we just might actually be able to get one), and is bottled at 50.5% ABV, a favorite proof for Chichibu.

Stay tuned for more!

Kanpai!

88 Bamboo Editorial Team