It's always cause for stirring serious buzz when one of these highly anticipated Ghost Series bottlings show up - they have no schedule, nor are beholden to any one distillery, or style of whisky - and yet each and every time they promise to showcase the most unique and fascinating of what Japan's most fabled and cult followed distilleries have to offer. Every bottle delivers a great story, and have together become a tapestry for Japan's vibrant and constantly evolving and developing whisky scene. And for that reason, they've become highly sought after, and rather legendary!

Each bottle in the Ghost Series features on its label a print from Japan's last ukiyo-e print master Yoshitoshi's very final works in the collection New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts - each print to only be used once - and have been represented across bottlings that have spanned over a decade of releases. These bottlings are hand-selected by Japanese whisky authority Stefan van Eycken, and are each a truly completely unique expression from the distillery from which they hail!

| Read: First Impressions From An Early Arriver To Japan's Whisky New Era: Stefan van Eycken Takes Us Ghostbusting

Ukiyo-e woodblock print master Yoshitoshi's New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts.

A mythical "rouge cask" from the one single year that Karuizawa had aged its whiskies in parent Mercian's wine casks? Or Akashi's aged in ex-Sake casks? How about a Chichibu aged in Apple Saison beer casks? Only the author of the hit book Whisky Rising, and the once editor of Japanese whisky site Nonjatta, also currently serving at Whisky Magazine Japan, Stefan van Eycken could pull these off. What started as a project to bottle some interesting and rare Japanese whiskies for fans of Nonjatta, has now become the definite (and ongoing) series of independently bottled Japanese whiskies that are amongst the most sought after, and also one that is incredibly historic - and tasty! 

Today we have the inside scoop then of Ghost #27 which has just been launched together with the one and only legendary Aloha Whisky Bar and its barkeep David Tsujimoto! Ghost #27 comes from the Niigata Kameda Distillery, which has just recently had its fully striped 3 Year Old Japanese single malts released, and has already turned heads with the quality of its work.

Below is our conversation with Stefan van Eycken who gives us the inside look into this special bottling!

Together for the debut of Ghost #27 at Tokyo's Aloha Whisky Bar! (Left to Right) David Tsujimoto, Hiroyuki Doda of Niigata Kameda Distillery, Stefan van Eycken.

[88 Bamboo] Hi Stefan, what better way to kick of the new year with an exciting new release from your highly followed Ghost Series! And this time, you've added a new name to the series that we haven't seen before, and it's also a name that's fresh and hot on the scene, and as we've heard has already gained a serious following. Please give us a little introduction to get us acquainted with Ghost #27!

[Stefan] On February 7^th, 2026, the latest instalment (#27) in the Ghost Series was released. Like the previous releases, this was done in collaboration with David Tsujimoto of Aloha Whisky Bar.

The 27^th release in the ongoing series featuring woodblock prints from Yoshitoshi’s “New Forms of 36 Ghosts” is a single cask from Niigata Kameda Distillery.

Niigata Kameda Distillery is the brainchild of Hiroyuki Doda, a whisky enthusiast who was encouraged by his wife to start making his own whisky when he lamented the fact that he couldn’t buy his favorite Japanese whisky (Taketsuru 17) anymore. As it happens, Doda’s wife runs Otani Co., Ltd., a major Japanese stamp manufacturer and the whisky distillery was set up on the site of the stamp factory, a 10-minute drive from Niigata station. (And because Niigata station is the terminus on the Joetsu shinkansen line, this puts Niigata Kameda Distillery in the top 3 fastest accessible whisky distilleries from Tokyo, even though the distance on the map might suggest otherwise. It’s just 2 hours by shinkansen from Tokyo.)

The whisky was bottled at cask strength (61% ABV), non-chill filtered and non-colored, and the outturn was 276 bottles. It is available for sale at Aloha Whisky Bar or by mail within Japan (if interested DM via Instagram @alohawhisky) while stocks last. Fans of the Ghost Series might wonder what happened to #26. The answer to that is: Ghost releases are numbered in the order that projects are conceived (which is not necessarily the order they are completed) so stay tuned and find out in a few months.

Doda-san at the Niigata Kameda Distillery.

Major whisky producers have to appeal to the majority of drinks enthusiasts with their products. “If there are 10 people in a room, their aim is to have a product that appeals to 8 or 9 of those people. For me,” Doda said, “I’m happy if what I made appeals to 1 person in that room, a person like me!”

[88 Bamboo] Niigata Kameda might be new on the scene, but as we've heard, has really captivated fans with its whiskies, and the distillery itself certainly comes from a rather interesting and unique background that at the same time bears much resonance with Japanese culture. Of course as someone who keeps close tabs on emerging and exciting happenings in the Japanese whisky scene - and has a serious penchant for finding the stars before they've shot through the sky, could you share with us more about how Niigata Kameda Distillery had first caught your attention?

[Stefan] Niigata Kameda distillery started distilling in early 2021 and quickly made a name for itself with the high quality of its new-make spirit (several expressions of which got high profile whisky awards worldwide). I had visited the distillery in March 2023 – wanting to wait until there was a little bit of aged stock on site before doing so – and was very impressed by what I saw and by Doda’s independently inquisitive approach to whisky making.

As he relayed to me, he made whisky simply because he loves whisky. Major whisky producers have to appeal to the majority of drinks enthusiasts with their products. “If there are 10 people in a room, their aim is to have a product that appeals to 8 or 9 of those people. For me,” Doda said, “I’m happy if what I made appeals to 1 person in that room, a person like me!” The key qualities of his whisky are “sweetness” and “a long aftertaste”. He is also not the sort of person to make whisky “by the textbook” – in fact, sometimes, he does things that run counter to the received wisdom in the whisky production textbook. All of this comes through in the whisky he makes and that, to me, makes him one of the most interesting new distillers on the Japanese whisky scene. I made a mental note to keep following the progress of his work and as his first whiskies passed the 3-year mark, I tried them whenever I had the chance. The quality confirmed that Doda-san’s was a truly individual voice in the – now quite crowded – Japanese whisky landscape. 

[88 Bamboo] Very cool! It's certainly rare to find distillers these days who can stay the course and hold true to their palate, yet as we've seen, those are more often than not the very ones who create spectacular whiskies. Sounds like a real life story of a whisky made by a whisky lover indeed! Tell us more then about how you set things off in motion that made Ghost #27 a reality!

[Stefan] In the summer of 2025, I suggested to David Tsujimoto of Aloha Whisky Bar in Ikebukuro that the time might be right to see if there was something special in the Niigata Kameda warehouses to bottle together and release as a “Ghost”. Having offered many of Niigata Kameda’s releases (mostly new-make or new-borns) by the glass over the first couple of years at his bar, David agreed and we reached out to Doda-san. He was keen, but running a whisky distillery with a small team that is kept busy – not only with production but also with attending whisky shows domestically and internationally – it took a few months before we could find a date to head over that worked for everyone involved.

Stefan van Eycken and David Tsujimoto with Doda-san picking out a very special one of only three Sherry Moscatel casks!

On October 7^th, 2025, we found ourselves at Niigata Kameda distillery. Asked what we were looking for, we had told Doda-san in advance that we wanted something slightly unusual – in keeping with the Ghost Series’ focus on the quirky side of the Japanese whisky scene. The handful of single cask bottlings for various retailers released up until that point tended to be first-fill bourbon. We wanted something slightly more unusual that showcased the Niigata Kameda spirit in an unexpected light. Doda-san had prepared 3 cask samples, all of them from different types of sherry casks. Picking a cask can be a tough process, but in this case, right from the beginning, David and I identified the cask that intrigued us the most: a Moscatel sherry hogshead (SH42). The cask gave a fascinating savory dimension to the natural sweetness of the Niigata Kameda spirit and the balance was spot-on, in spite of this being – by necessity – a young whisky. We went on a tour of the distillery after the tasting and when asked by some of the staff members which of the samples we had chosen and telling them it was the moscatel one, we got very approving comments, which indicated to David and myself that this was known to be a special one by the people working there. (It is, in fact, quite rare – being one of only 3 such casks used at Niigata Kameda Distillery at the time of writing.)

The whisky was left in the cask for a bit longer so it would be slightly over 3 years old at the time of bottling. In the end – with a bit of nail-biting on the part of David and myself – it was bottled a week before the launch event held at Aloha Whisky Bar on February 7^th, 2026. Doda-san was kind enough to travel to Tokyo for this and brought with him a fabulous selection of other cask samples and works-in-progress. 

[88 Bamboo] And of course, we can't let you off without asking you to tell us about the label you picked!

[Stefan] For Ghost #27, I selected a print from Yoshitoshi’s “New Forms of 36 Ghosts” showing Taira no Kiyomori, one of the most ruthless and treacherous political figures of the late Heian period, in his final days, when he started to go insane and was haunted by terrifying hallucinations: the skulls and skeletons of his myriad victims. There is no direct connection with the liquid – this is becoming harder as the Ghost Series enters its final stretch – but we felt the color scheme of the print worked well against the color of the whisky.

The label itself was designed by Hiroyuki Doda’s wife, Naoko!

[88 Bamboo] Awesome! Thank you so much for sharing this story with us, as we've come to expect, each release in the Ghost Series comes with such an awesome backstory that's just about as fascinating as the whisky itself! 

If you're looking to catch one of these super rare Ghost Series bottlings for yourself, definitely drop a message to the wonderful David Tsujimoto at Aloha Whisky Bar, either in-person or via Instagram DM (@alohawhisky) - move fast, ghosts don't stay on for too long! There's just 276 bottles at cask strength for you to catch! All the best ghostbusters!

Kanpai!

@111hotpot