Prices
Prices and stock come from each retailer's website. Check with the store before you buy.
More from this distillery: All Chichibu whiskies and prices
About
What it is
A single cask Chichibu bottled in 2025 for Whisky Abbey, from cask number 8236. Single cask releases like this are bottled for individual retailers, bars and clubs, usually in the low hundreds of bottles, and each one is genuinely unique: one cask, no vatting, no attempt at consistency.
Where it comes from
Chichibu, in Saitama, built by Ichiro Akuto in 2004 and distilling since 2008, the first new whisky distillery in Japan in 35 years. Everything is distilled, matured and bottled on site. Akuto has been among the most vocal producers in arguing that Japanese whisky should mean something specific, and Chichibu's single malts carry no imported component.
How it's made
Chichibu works at a deliberately small scale: a small mill, a hand-stirred mash tun, mizunara washbacks and Forsyths pot stills. The valley swings between freezing winters and hot humid summers, which drives maturation considerably faster than a cooler climate would, so a Chichibu of a given age tastes older than the number suggests. Single cask bottlings are almost always cask strength, non-chill filtered and natural colour.
Cask 8236's wood type and fill date aren't something we can confirm from available sources. On a single cask release that's the single most important variable, so the bottle or the retailer's own notes are the place to check.
What to expect
Impossible to generalise, and that's the appeal. Chichibu's house character runs to tropical fruit, pineapple and mango, with honey and white pepper, but a single cask can land anywhere depending on the wood. Expect cask strength and expect it to be distinctive rather than balanced.
How it compares
Against Chichibu's core releases like The First Ten or the 10 Year Old, those are vatted for consistency and this isn't. Against other single cask Chichibus, each is its own thing. If you want the house style, buy a vatted release; if you want a snapshot of one barrel, this is it.
