Single Malt

Yoichi Distillery

Located 50 kilometres west of Sapporo on the island of Hokkaido, the Yoichi distillery cannot leave you indifferent with its stone walls and red tile roof. It combines a classicism with an aestheticism that only the Japanese have the secret of.

It was in 1934 that the founder of the Nikka group built his emblematic distillery on the once almost deserted island of Hokkaido, fulfilling his dream of recreating a piece of Scotland in the land of the rising sun.

Yoichi has an underground water source filtered through peat, the best available for producing whisky. It has its own kiln with traditional pagoda-shaped chimneys. The kiln stopped working in the 70's. Very traditional, the distillery used to malt its barley on the spot and used peat from the Ishikari plains. From now on, the distillery buys its barley in Scotland, as the local barley is expensive and of average quality.

On the other hand, the pot stills are still heated over an open fire, a traditional method which most of the Scottish distilleries have abandoned. Onion-shaped and relatively stocky, they produce a rich and full-bodied spirit.

Depending on the wishes of the master distiller, Yoichi can produce a very peated, unpeated, lightly peated or light, ordinary or heavy and concentrated malt.this is something that can turn the heads of Scottish master distillers, who sometimes find it difficult to produce a single type of malt in a homogeneous way! Indeed, as Japanese blenders are not in the habit of exchanging casks, they have to produce different flavour profiles on the same site. Yoichi offers an incredibly rich range of flavours with peat and spices as the common thread.

The visitor centre is a model of its kind. It tells the story of the founder Masataka Taketsuru and his Scottish wife Rita.

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