Yamazaki Whisky (Oyamazaki, Japan)

The Suntory Yamazaki Whisky DistilleryOyamazaki, Kyoto Prefecture (Japan)
Call me a snob, but I became a fan of Japanese whisky, and it all began with a single bottle of Suntory Yamazaki that I sipped in paris...
Hidden at the foot of green hills flush with spring water and under the protective quietness of the Tennozan mountain, here is the Suntory Yamazaki distillery. Located just a stone throw from the railroad tracks linking Kyoto and Osaka, it sits roughly inbetween the two towns. Just a few years ago I wouldn't have guessed that Japan was a whisky-producing country, even less that it was the second biggest producer. That was only when B. offered me a bottle of Suntory Yamazaki 12 Years Single Malt Whisky that she had received at her job that I became aware of this little-publicized reality. As an occasional whisky amateur I try to appreciate the differences between the different brands I come accross, and I liked the smooth qualities of this one. If you are among the people who watched (and liked) Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, another Suntoty whisky had a nice role there in the hands of Bill Murray, Suntory Hibiki 17 years 43°, but I didn't pay attention at the time, like most viewers.
So here we are, in the first Japanese whisky distillery, and it was founded long before the end of WW2 and the ensuing American influence. Shinjiro Torii, born to an Osaka money-changer in 1879, was to become the founder of Suntory Ltd. (the Japanese alcohol beverage giant). In 1899, he started his own wine wholesaling business in Osaka and imported wine from Spain. A Japanese entrepreneur's story : In 1923 he pursued another dream and built Japan's first Malt Whisky distillery, with someone named Masataka Taketsuru as distillery manager. The young Masataka had just spend time in Scottish distilleries to learn the Art of whisky making. Just for the anecdote, after putting Yamazaki on the rails during 10 years, he left for Hokkaido where he founded his own whisky distillery, Nikka Whisky Co. Two exceptionnal men, two exceptionnal products... Back to Shinjiro Torii : He selected this Oyamazaki spot, a valley where the Katsura, Kizu and Uji rivers merge and where fog lingers almost year around. The location was accessible and the water was abundant and perfectly fit to make a great whisky.

The Yamazaki Direct-Fire Distillation StillsLike for the beginning of the car industry or the electronics in Japan, the rest of the world didn't pay too much attention and it's only after many years that Suntoty's Whisky got an international recognition from its pairs : in 2003, the Yamazaki 12-year Single Malt winned the top prize at the International Spirits Challenge in London. And that's not a single occurence : check the results for 2007 [Word] and you will see (scroll down to the bottom of the page) at the "whiskies of the world" chapter that Suntory's Whiskies won gold, silver and bronze... After years of being shy to export their whisky, the Japanese became more confident and you can now find Suntory's whiskies abroad.
We happened to spend a few days in Kyoto and we stayed at a friend's atelier in Katsura, near Kyoto. Accidently, Oyamazaki, where Suntory's Yamazaki distillery sits, is only a couple of stations on the local Hankyu line to Osaka, so I decided to pay visit while B. went to Kyoto. This was a beautiful day, a few clouds but mostly sunny. I walked across Katsura's quiet and narrow streets to the station, bought the ticket to Oyamazaki (220 Yen) and after checking that I was on the right platform, boarded my Hankyu train. This was a swift trip. At the station, I asked for direction to the man near the turnstiles and he gave me a well made plan showing where the plant was. The Suntory Yamazaki distillery is a popular visit for Japanese tourists, and it shows that whisky still has its followers even though it is less popular than it was in the 1950's.The Cask Filling LineThere's a visit every hour and it lasts one hour. I arrived for the 10am visit. We were a mere 10 people, all Japanese (in summer months it can be crowded) and the visit began. The original wooden building is not there anymore but you can see some of the original stills outside, near two statues of the founders. I am not familiar with a whisky distillery but at Yamazaki it seems that you see everything, from the malt fermentation vat (picture above right) to the cask filling line (above) and of course the beautiful direct-fire copper stills with which they craft their different malt whiskies. If like me you don't understand Japanese, it's is still a nice visit and you guess many of the things the young woman explains, especially if you read before the english-language printed material that you were handed at the gate. All the casks seem quite old, even the ones being filled when we visited. They choose carefully the type of casks and they are made with genus-Quercus-serrata trees, including Japanese oak, Konara oak and Oriental white oak. They also use American white oak and European oak.Learning the Good Things Early...The cask room is amazing. Imagine a huge warehouse filled floor to ceiling with whisky-filled casks from all the available millesimes. You pass row after row of casks, some being very old already. I didn't walk all the rows but the oldest year I saw was 1961, and believe me, I knocked them to check, it is not a decoration display, there are full of the real thing...The one near the child reads : "DB3033 Pot Still Pure Malt Whisky 1999". They use several cask types :
__The 180-liter barrel that they use when new to age bourbon. The older barrels are then suited for malt whisky.
__The 230-liter Hogshead made of American oak, for the Hakushu whiskies.
__The 480-liter Puncheon made of carefully-selected straight-grained North-American white oak, which gives a neat, woody flavor.
__The 480-liter Sherry Butt. These casks, after a first use to make Spanish sherry, help make a malt whisky with a "unique, deep and mature flavor whith some of the color, flavor and taste of sherry", according to Suntory's booklet.
There's an interesting story about the Japanese oak casks : they began to use this oak during the post-war years because of the shortage of sherry casks. The Japanese oak having less tyloses than white oak, the casks tended to leak a bit and the casks were left with the spirit inside and nearly forgottent in the huge warehouse as sherry casks were available again on the market. Then, years after they discovered that some magic has worked in these Japanese-oak casks, with unique flavors of aloes-wood and sandal-wood very rare in a whisky.the 1961 Casks (foreground)The blend is as important for a good whisky than for many good wines. At Yamazaki, the man in charge of this strategic decision is Mr Seiichi Koshimizu. He tastes more than 200 distillates selected from about a million casks everyday. As a result, he will choose the best blend combination for the type of whisky he wants to make. That seems quite a lot to me but that's what the booklet says. It also implies that even though this cask warehouse seems huge, it is far to be the only one where Suntory keeps its whiskies...At one point we see the gated "owner's casks" cellar. The owner's cask program was initiated by Suntory in the end of 2004. The first such offer made by a Japanese distiller, it consists of selecting casks of unblended malt whisky for sale to private buyers. The buyers can taste the whisky before signing a contract at the distillery. In the first sale, about a hundred casks were selected and the prices went from 500 000 Yen for the cheapest to 3 000 000 yen (19 000 Euro) for the most expensive which was distilled in 1979, matured in a mizunara cask (a sort of oak) and yielded 290 bottles.
There has been a lot of research made by the Suntory people since the early days of the distillery. Today they use 6 stills which are very different from each other, and they choose the type of yeast, the heating and the elevage depending of the whisky they want to obtain. The Ultimate Secret : the WaterLong before Shinjiro Torii founded the distillery here, the village of Oyamazaki was known for its extremely pure spring water. I shot this picture just behind the plant, and wether we see here the natural setting or the result of smart landscaping, this spring water still bears its original qualities thanks to the mountainous wilderness by which it is backed.
You have to imagine that back in the 1920s', Whisky was some strange alien drink for most Japanese, and that Mr torii was pushed by his personal passion for whiskies and had to face some hostility among local people when he built his plant here. To complicate things, in spite of the pure water, the first whiskies were far to reach any international level, but he and his aides kept trying and improving, and their first reasonable-quality whisky went out in 1937 under the name of Kakubin. Alas WW2 brought his adventure to a temporary halt, until a rapid resurrection after 1945, helped by incoming American troops. But the American military seems to have had several encounters with Japanese whisky prior to WWII. Our fellow blogger Nonjatta, aka Chris Bunting, a british expat-journalist and a specialist on anything whisky, found traces of two transport-boats full of American soldiers on their way to fight the bosheviks in Siberia in 1918, which stopped in the Northern port of Hakodate in Japan. The soldiers drank more than their share of Japanese whisky (which was probably very different from today's Suntory or Nikka) and became so unruly that the boats had to leave without loading the coal they came here for. So, it seems that at least 5 years before the Suntory distillery was built, someone in Japan was already brewing some sort of cheap whisky.A Unique Whisky Library with 7000 Samples...The public relation of Suntory is outstanding. Everything here runs smoothly, not only the one-hour free visit, but they have a free tasting of a couple of whiskies at the end of the tour, plus a shop, and this unique whisky library showcasing 7000 bottles of unblended malt whisky. A detail to notice : this is Japan, and the bottles aren't even behind locked glass-windows...There is a tasting bar near the library where you can (for a fee) experience the blender's job and compare the different type of distillates obtained through different still-heat or maturation. I usually don't like too much the nice visitor centers and the brand new tasting rooms but I'll make an exception : Suntory did a great job here.
So, at the end of the visit, we are offered two generous pours with the explanations of the tasting clerk [pic on left]. I was just a little bit disappointed that they served the whisky the way the Japanese usually drink it : "rokku" (on the rocks), that is in a glass full of ice cubes. I was sipping my Yamazaki 12 Years Single Malt trying to guess the whisky aromas behind so much melting water when the nice young woman-clerk came to me and asked if I wanted to taste the whiskies straight. Was it because I was a gaijin or because they saw I took plenty of notes all along the visit, whatever, I appreciate the care...So, I ended up drinking 4 whiskies, I love Japan...
The shop sells all of Suntory's whiskies, at a price that doesn't differ from the normal prices seen in liquor shops in Japan, but you will find the largest choice here. The Yamazaki Single Malt 12 Years for example costs something like 7300 Yen here (46 Euro or 70 USD). I just bought a Yamazaki 10 years at some 4500 Yen and thought I would buy other bottles at the airport tax-free shops. Here is another reason to crush the brainless bigots who plotted to blend their own explosive mix in airliner toilets a few years ago : with the new preventive measures and because our flight back home wasn't direct and stopped in Zurich, I couldn't buy anything liquid in Narita : I would have been allowed to board with it in Japan, but not in Zurich, even if sealed. Look at what I missed there : Suntory Yamazaki Single Malt 12 years for 4500 Yen (28 Euro or 43 USD), and same price for a Nikka 12 years. Quite upsetting... There's a Nonjatta page about the great deals you can make in this Narita shop. They have a tremendous choice of other whiskies, including one I'll post about one day : the divine Girvan 1964. I found the way out of this inconvenience : I am looking for any acquaintances who would fly direct to Paris in the coming months...

Comments

[hikalu]

I've been to the Yamazaki brewery before. I'd tasted them straight. There is over 30 years old vintage. Of course, You could taste it. It smelt caramel, and has soft and sweet taste. I also liked mint flavored one.

http://monsemainier.blogspot.com/2005/10/yamazaki-whisky-brewery.html

[hikalu]

This place seems popular as the battle of "Yamazaki", which Hideyoshi TOYOTOMI beated Mitsuhide AKECHI. I've also heard of that there are ghoasts appearing midnight.

I was given a 760ml bottle of Suntory Excellence whisky some 16-17 years ago by a widow lady that lived next door to me after her husband died. She said that her husband had received this bottle thirty years prior that that by an army buddy of his that brought it home from Japan. If her information is accurate this whisky was bottled in the very early 1960's, and needless to say I am wondering if anyone can give me any information about this bottle. On the label, and on the bottom of the bottle, it says that this whiskey was distilled and vatted at the Yamazaki Distillery, and I am wonderinf if this means that this bottle of whisky is a blend of single malt whiskies (vatted), or if it is a blended whsiky with a single malt whisky and grain alcohol?! Since this botttle still has an unbroken seal on it, I also wonder if it has any value to it?! I do have the box that this bottle came in, but the box is in pretty bad condition. I would greatly appreciate any help I can get with this bottle!!!

[Nonjatta]

Thanks for the link. Lovely photos.

[Thomas Corby]

I have unopened bottle, in box of Suntory Whiskey commemorating opening of New Tokyo International Airport in 1978. Any interest?

[Lab.ct]

your brand is just great.

congratulations gues

thank you for your products