Nikka Coffey Malt

The Nikka company was founded in 1934 by the father of Japanese whisky, Masataka Taketsuru, after he let his ten year contract with Shinjiro Torii lapse following a disagreement over the location of the latter's Yamazaki distillery. Taketsuru used his experience of building and running Yamazaki to construct a new distillery, named Yoichi, in the mountains of Hokkaido, whose location and climate he believed more closely resembled the Scottish landscape in which he had learned his craft.

Asahi Holdings acquired Nikka in 1954, but Taketsuru remained at the helm of the company and built the Sendai distillery (now known as Miyagikyo) in 1969. After Masataka Taketsuru’s death in 1979 his nephew and adopted son Takeshi took over at Nikka, returning to Scotland to buy the moribund Ben Nevis distillery in 1989. Takeshi Taketsuru greatly expanded Nikka’s overseas operations and exports, and played a major part in Japanese whisky’s present success.

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.