June 21, 2024 –––––– Jonny McCormick, , , ,
In celebration of its 90th anniversary, Nikka Whisky is releasing a blend comprised of whiskies distilled in each of the past 9 decades. The Nikka Nine Decades is made from more than 50 components encompassing 6 Nikka-owned distilleries, including whisky laid down in the 1940s. The company blended the oldest stocks of single malt from Yoichi and Miyagikyo Distilleries, as well as whisky from Ben Nevis Distillery in Scotland, new grain whisky from Moji and Satsuma Tsukasa, and aged grain whisky from Nishinomiya. This expression is bottled at 48% ABV and carries a suggested retail price of $3,000. It’s a 4,000-bottle release that will roll out in July, with 400 bottles hitting the U.S. in October.
Nikka Whisky's founder Masataka Taketsuru was born in 1894 into a family that had owned a sake brewing business since the early 1700s. Taketsuru worked for Settsu Shuzo, then a leading producer of Western-style liquor in Osaka, and set out for Scotland on his own to learn how to make whisky. His studies in Scotland took him to the University of Glasgow before he worked at Longmorn, Bo’ness, and Hazelburn Distilleries from 1918 to 1920. These short apprenticeships gave him knowledge of the production of single malt scotch, continuous distillation of grain whisky on a Coffey still, and the art of blending. Taketsuru also fell in love during his time in Scotland, and returned to Japan with his Scottish wife Rita.
Taketsuru traveled home in late 1920 and discovered that Settsu Shuzo was unable to carry out its plan to make whisky. He instead went to work for Shinjiro Torii, the founder of Kotobukiya, the company that grew into today’s Suntory Global Spirits. Taketsuru designed the blueprints for Yamazaki Distillery based on his notes from Scotland and served as its first distillery manager when it opened in 1924. However, records show that as early as 1927, Taketsuru began to consider Hokkaido as a potential location for a distillery.
Taketsuru decided to go into business independently, and Yoichi became his new company’s first distillery in 1934. It was built on the northern island of Hokkaido in a mountainous region facing the Sea of Japan, a location selected by Taketsuru for its similarity to Campbeltown in Scotland. In 1969, his second distillery, Miyagikyo, opened in a forested valley in the Miyagi prefecture, on the east coast of Japan’s main island, Honshu.
Nikka started as a juice company called Dai Nippon Kaju, meaning the Great Japanese Juice Company, making use of the region’s abundant apple crop. While selling apple juice as the whisky matured, the Dai Nippon Kaju company name was shorted to Nikka. The company still makes products with apples to this day, such as Nikka Apple Wine, a fortified wine bottled at 22% that’s a popular nightcap in Japan, using apple brandy made at its Hirosaki Cidery in Aomori prefecture. To celebrate that link, in 2020, Nikka released a pair of Miyagikyo and Yoichi expressions finished in apple brandy barrels to mark the centenary of Masataka and Rita’s 1920 wedding.
Yoichi is a traditional coal-fired distillery and creates variety by using different combinations of yeast strains, barrel types, and aging conditions. It makes a heavily peated single malt that’s aged in new oak, bourbon, refill, sherry, and mizunara casks among others. The water is drawn from the Yoichi River, while sea breezes from Ishikari Bay influence the maturation of the malt whisky inside the casks. The first single malt from the distillery was called the Single Malt of Hokkaido and released in 1984, followed by Single Malt Yoichi in 1989. Nikka from the Barrel was the No.1 whisky of the year in the 2018 Whisky Advocate Top 20. It’s a complex recipe of malt and grain whiskies from their Japanese and Scottish operations, which are blended together then married in oak casks. First launched in 1985, it is always bottled at 51.4% as a nod to Taketsuru’s experiences at distilleries in Scotland as this strength is the closest ABV to 90 British proof.
In the run up to the 90th anniversary, Nikka Whisky released the Discovery Series, a collection of experimental whiskies created by Nikka’s chief blender Hiromi Ozaki. The final whisky in that series, Nikka The Grain, has particular relevance for The Nikka Nine Decades as it combined grain whiskies from Miyagikyo, Moji, Satsuma Tsukasa, and Nishinomiya.
