Nikka Yoichi 10 Year Old

Yoichi distillery was constructed by the legendary Masataka Taketsuru in 1934 after his departure from Suntory forerunner Kotobukiya to found the Nikka whisky company. Taketsuru built Yoichi at his preferred location in the mountains of Hokkaido, whose landscape and climate conditions were similar to the Scottish Highlands where he had learned the art of whisky-making.

As Nikka’s only distillery, Yoichi produced all the whisky for Nikka releases until after the construction of the Miyagikyo distillery in 1969. Yoichi started life with just one pot still; today the distillery has six stills, all of which are direct-fired by coal in the traditional manner. Yoichi’s robust, smoky house style has become hugely popular in Western markets since the turn of the millennium and stock is now very scarce; the distillery’s core range was axed in 2015 and replaced with a single NAS bottling.

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.