Prices
Prices and stock come from each retailer's website. Check with the store before you buy.
More from this distillery: All Togouchi and Sakurao whiskies and prices
About
What it is
The first 100% Japanese single malt in the Togouchi range, released in July 2021 alongside the first Sakurao single malt. Bottled at 43% in the range's distinctive earthenware bottle. Created by master distiller Taihei Yamamoto.
Where it comes from
This is the turning point for the company. Chugoku Jozo stopped distilling in 1989 and spent nearly two decades selling Togouchi as a blend of imported Scottish malt and Canadian grain matured in a Japanese tunnel. In 2018, to mark its centenary, it opened Sakurao Distillery and started making whisky again. This bottling is the distillery's own spirit, distilled, matured and bottled in Japan.
So the Togouchi name now covers two very different things. The old blends were sourced. The single malt is not. Worth checking which one you're holding.
How it's made
Distilled at Sakurao, at Hatsukaichi on the Seto Inland Sea, in pot stills. Where Sakurao-branded whisky matures by the coast, the Togouchi-branded stock goes inland to the former railway tunnel at Akiota-Togouchi, bored through the mountain, where temperature and humidity hold steady all year. Same distillate, entirely different maturation environment, which is a genuinely unusual thing for one company to be able to offer. This release combines bourbon and sherry casks.
What to expect
Vanilla up front, then apple and orange marmalade, moving into dried fruit, brown sugar and fresh nuts, with ginger and Japanese pepper spice lifting the finish. Rounder and more even than the age would suggest, which the tunnel gets the credit for.
How it compares
Against the Togouchi blends, this is the one distilled in Japan. Against Sakurao Single Malt, same spirit matured by the sea instead of under the mountain, and the two side by side make one of the better maturation comparisons in Japanese whisky.
