This controversial and somewhat mysterious whisky is supposedly Chichibu distillate, purchased by Akkeshi, who shipped it to Scotland to be matured in a 1969 ex-Glenrothes cask (cask 1 of 2). Rumors are abound that cask 2 is another old Glenrothes cask or ancient Bowmore. Strangely enough, the bottle (and box) says "Japanese Single Cask Vatted Malt Whisky". From what I understand, vatted malts are combining different matured single malts from one or more distilleries (in a large vat, thus vatted) to bottle. So how is it single cask? Unless they blended the single malts before putting it into the old Glenrothes cask? The timeline is so complicated, even the Grandfather Paradox is easier to understand. However, word on the street is that they had to use "vat" because the juice was teaspooned with Hanyu. Was it teaspooned at Chichibu? At Akkeshi? In Scotland? After "vatting"? On a boat off the coast of Hong Kong? Perhaps a teaspoon of precious, or bad, Hanyu was added to the Chichibu distillate which was then poured into two casks with this bottling being one of those two casks? That makes some sense. Another funny thing is the name too. The Japanese name of 荒川 means the Ara river near Tokyo ("川" means river, or stream depending on which Asian language), but the English name is Araside and not Ara River. According to @alohawhisky, Araside is supposed to mean the other side of the Ara river, pointing towards Scotland, signifying the trip to Scotland from Japan. I've also heard its a play on phonetics where "ara side" sounds like "other side". I don't hear it, but I have neither a Japanese nor Scottish accent in my head. [Continued in comments]

Image courtesy of Eric Yee.

Eric Yee

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