Akashi (Eigashima)

Akashi is the whisky of Eigashima Shuzo, a sake brewery in the city of Akashi in Hyogo, overlooking the Seto Inland Sea. The distillery is called White Oak, and some bottles carry that name too.

It is a tiny operation. The stills run for only part of the year, and for the rest of it the same people make sake and shochu. What it lacks in volume it makes up in variety: the bottles we track include single malts matured or finished in sherry, bourbon, red wine, white wine and sake casks, alongside several blends.

Eigashima does not publish bottle by bottle whether its whiskies meet the Japanese whisky labelling standard.

The Urabe family is reported to have brewed sake in Akashi since 1679. The company began making spirits in 1888, and it is widely credited with receiving a licence to make whisky in 1919, which would make it the first in Japan, ahead of Suntory and Nikka.

For most of the twentieth century it made whisky for blends rather than bottling its own malt. The current White Oak distillery was built in 1984, reusing the stills and washbacks from the old one, and the first Akashi single malt, an eight year old, was released in 2007.

White Oak has two pot stills and runs them for only a few months a year, so output is very small. Much of the character in the range comes from the casks, which is why so many Akashi bottlings are named for the wood they finished in.