Distillery
Shinobu
Niigata
11 bottles tracked, 7 in stock from $80.00 to $288.99 across 2 retailers.
Bottles
11 whiskies
Prices come from each retailer's website and are checked daily.
Provenance
Meets the Japanese whisky standard
None.
Shinobu has not stated a position on the other 10 bottles we track. That is not the same as failing the standard, so they are not listed as either.
About
Shinobu is the whisky of Ken Usami, who founded Niigata Beer in 1997, obtained Niigata's first whisky licence in 2017 and launched Shinobu in 2018. The name means forbearance, the patience whisky making demands. The signature is mizunara: every Shinobu and The Shin whisky is finished in Japanese oak casks.
The early Shinobu whiskies were blended from whisky made elsewhere and finished in mizunara in Niigata while the company built up its own production. Shinobu does not publish bottle by bottle what each one contains or whether it meets the Japanese whisky labelling standard. The dates help: the Shin 10 and 15 Year Old malts carry age statements far longer than Shinobu has been distilling, so they cannot be its own spirit.
How they make it
Shinobu's own distilling stepped up in 2022, when it expanded its Niigata distillery with two German pot stills from Carl, of 3,000 and 2,000 litres. A second distillery at Tsugawa, in the mountains of Niigata, uses geothermal heat from nearby hot springs to run its stills, which Usami says is a first for Japanese whisky.