There are few words more overused in the whisky industry than craft. It’s a word that’s so often and so broadly applied that it risks losing its meaning. But at Chichibu, it’s everything.

The Saitama distillery has built a global reputation through an uncompromising commitment to the craft of whisky making. Since it began operating in 2007, Chichibu has gone from one of Japan's smallest distilleries to one of its most respected. At its heart is founder Ichiro Akuto.

Just a few years before opening the distillery, Ichiro Akuto witnessed the dismantling of his family's Hanyu Distillery, ending a whisky-making institution stretching back generations. At the same time, Japan's whisky industry was in decline. Consumption had been falling for more than twenty-five years and very few people thought there was room for a new distillery.

But, as this blog will reveal, Ichiro Akuto is a determined and unconventional person.

Before creating Chichibu he took a journey reminiscent of that of Masataka Taketsuru. He visited and learned from some of the world's most respected small distilleries such as Kilchoman, Edradour, Benromach, Daftmill, Penderyn and even some cider makers in England. He also spent time working at Karuizawa in 2006 and Benriach in 2007, experiences that helped inform his understanding of whisky production from multiple angles.

Rather than trying to compete with Japan's largest producers, Akuto envisioned something entirely different: a small distillery where quality would always take precedence over efficiency. Construction began in 2007, a whisky licence followed in early 2008, and in February that year, the stills were fired up.

Compared with Japan's established whisky producers at the time, Chichibu was tiny. The original distillery houses a single pair of Forsyths pot stills, a modest stainless-steel mash tun and just eight wooden washbacks. Annual production is a drop in the ocean by industry standards, and intentionally so.

Rather than relying entirely on automated systems or predetermined measurements, many decisions still come down to observation, experience and judgement. Operators monitor each stage of production closely, responding to subtle differences that machinery alone cannot detect.

The original mash tun for example contains no mechanical rakes. Instead, stirring the mash and measuring its volume are carried out by hand. It's a slower, more labour-intensive approach, but one that keeps people closely connected to the whisky they're making.

Like many Japanese distilleries, Chichibu originally relied heavily on imported malted barley. For Akuto, however, imported barley was never intended to be the long-term solution. From the very beginning, he wanted to incorporate barley grown closer to home, even if doing so proved significantly more difficult and expensive. By 2022, domestic barley accounted for around 70% of the barley used at the original Chichibu distillery.

In the meantime, members of the Chichibu team made trips to Norfolk to learn traditional floor malting techniques themselves. Today, Chichibu has its own floor malting facilities capable of processing around three tonnes of barley, allowing the distillery to experiment with different grain varieties and gain an even deeper understanding of whisky's most important ingredient.

One of Chichibu's most distinctive features is its use of mizunara washbacks. Beautiful as they are, these things present many practical challenges. They're expensive, difficult to clean, prone to leaking and initially required additional yeast to counteract tannins released by the wood.

Despite their difficulties, Akuto believed the naturally occurring microorganisms living within the timber contributed to flavour development during fermentation, helping create greater complexity in the spirit long before it reached the stills.

And in the pursuit of greater complexity, a typical fermentation at Chichibu can reach five days. The standard at most major distilleries is two to three days, which puts into perspective just how much more time Chichibu is prepared to sacrifice for flavour development.

Around half of Chichibu's new make spirit is matured in ex-bourbon barrels, providing a familiar foundation for the distillery's rich and fruity spirit. The remainder is filled into an extraordinary variety of casks, including ex-sherry, wine, Cognac, Madeira, port, rum, tequila and grappa casks, alongside one of the most ambitious mizunara programmes anywhere in Japan.

After falling in love with whisky matured in mizunara oak, Akuto became determined to incorporate it into Chichibu's future. As many now know, Mizunara is scarce, expensive and difficult to work with. So rather than waiting for suppliers to offer suitable timber, Akuto decided to source it himself.

Since 2010, he travels regularly to Hokkaido, where thousands of logs are sold through auctions. Competing not only with other whisky producers but also furniture makers and craftsmen, Chichibu began purchasing carefully selected mizunara logs directly.

And, in the spirit of doing absolutely everything, Akuto had a cooperage built to process the timber. In 2013, veteran cooper Mitsuo Saito announced his retirement and the closure of his workshop. Akuto purchased the equipment and relocated it to Chichibu, establishing one of the few fully operational cooperages attached to a Japanese whisky distillery.

The cooperage gave the distillery complete control over repairing, modifying and eventually building its own casks, opening the door to an entirely new level of experimentation.

Among its most distinctive creations is the chibidaru, a compact quarter cask developed by modifying traditional bourbon barrels. Holding around 130 litres, these smaller casks increase the ratio of wood to spirit, accelerating maturation and allowing Chichibu to explore flavour development in new ways.

The cooperage has also produced hybrid casks fitted with mizunara or red oak heads, allowing the distillery to introduce the influence of rare Japanese oak without the enormous cost and technical challenges of constructing an entire cask from mizunara.

By the middle of the 2010s, demand had outgrown supply.

The original distillery was operating close to capacity, yet Akuto had no intention of making it bigger. Doing so would have meant changing the production methods that had earned Chichibu its reputation.

His solution was characteristically unconventional, rather than expanding the existing site, he built an entirely new distillery just a two-minute drive away. Producing around five times the volume of the original distillery, Chichibu II was designed to meet growing demand while preserving the craftsmanship that defined its predecessor.

Although the two distilleries share the same DNA, Chichibu II isn't simply a larger copy. Several production choices reflect lessons learned during the first decade.

The mizunara washbacks that define the original distillery have been replaced with French oak vessels supplied by Tonnellerie Taransaud. The larger mash tun has also modernised certain aspects of production, eliminating the need for manual stirring while remaining under close human supervision.

With much of the production burden transferred to the second site, Chichibu I has increasingly concentrated on distilling Japanese-grown barley and extending fermentation times, continuing to push flavour development even further.

So rather than sacrificing craft in pursuit of growth, expansion into a second distillery has actually strengthened it. The original distillery remains a place of experimentation, while the second ensures those experiments can continue without compromising supply.

Few producers have managed to scale so successfully while remaining so faithful to their founding philosophy.

Today, Chichibu is one of the world's most sought-after whisky distilleries. Its bottles disappear within minutes of release and are prized by collectors across the globe.

Natural scarcity obviously plays a role, however the distillery's success comes from thousands of deliberate decisions, many of them invisible to the drinker. Choosing domestic barley. Extending fermentation. Making spirit cuts by taste. Sourcing its own timber.
Building its own cooperage. Constructing a second distillery to protect the philosophy of the first.

Each decision reflects the same belief, that great whisky isn't made by shortcuts.

Acknowledgements

This article draws on research from Whisky Rising by Stefan Van Eycken, one of the most comprehensive works on Japanese whisky and an invaluable reference for the history and development of Chichibu Distillery. We highly recommend it to anyone looking to explore Japanese whisky in greater depth.