Fuji (Kirin)

Fuji Gotemba is Kirin's whisky distillery, at 620 metres on the lower slopes of Mount Fuji in Shizuoka. It is unusual in Japan for making both malt and grain whisky on one site, and it is best known for the grain: Fuji Single Grain is one of the few Japanese grain whiskies with a following of its own.

The distillery was set up as a joint venture between Kirin and Seagram, the Canadian drinks company that then owned Chivas, and its equipment still reflects that North American and Scottish parentage. Kirin does not publish bottle by bottle whether each of its whiskies meets the Japanese whisky labelling standard.

Kirin Seagram established the distillery in 1972, and production started in 1973. Gotemba was chosen because its climate was thought to be the closest in Japan to Scotland's: cooler and much less humid than most of the country in summer, with an average temperature of about 13 degrees. Mount Fuji's snowmelt supplies the water.

The malt side has two pairs of pot stills. The grain side is the interesting part. Fuji Gotemba has three different setups for grain distillation: a multi-column still for a light spirit, a doubler of the kind used for American whiskey, and a kettle still of a Canadian design, reportedly the only one outside Canada. Between them they make three weights of grain spirit, light, medium and heavy, and Fuji Single Grain is a blend of all three.