Akashi White Oak 5 Year Old - Single Cask 61071 - Half Litre

White Oak is the anglicised name of Eigashima Shuzo distillery in Japan’s Hyogo prefecture. Eigashima Shuzo / White Oak distillery was built in 1888 by Hyokichi Urabe, whose family had made sake since 1679, as a separate venture to make spirit for shochu. White Oak obtained Japan’s first licence to distil whisky in 1919 - a few years before the construction of the nearby Yamazaki distillery.

The original ‘whiskies’ made at White Oak were rice spirit imitations, but in the early 1960s two pot stills were installed at Eigashima to make proper single malt whisky for a couple of months each year. In 1984 these stills were retired and a new building with bigger stills was constructed, though most spirit production is still for shochu. White Oak’s blended and single malt whiskies appear most often under the company’s Akashi and Tokinoka brands.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.