Karuizawa x Dekantā
Two years ago, we reported on plans to reactivate Japan's legendary Karuizawa distillery, as presented by Karuizawa Distillers Inc. Unfortunately, they do not include the reconstruction of the distillery on the same site, in the same buildings, but the resemblance of the project to the old distillery, which closed in 2000, is impressive.
The new distillery, currently under construction, is located about 10 kilometers from where the original Karuizawa operated from 1955 to 2000, on the slope of the Asama volcano in Nagano Prefecture. The state-of-the-art distillery was scheduled to begin production in the spring of 2022, but problems related to the pandemic halted all work and pushed back any deadlines by less than a year. Although there is little more than a week left until the end of 2022, Karuizawa Distillers announces that it will start chipping and filling the first batch of barrels later this year.
The new distillery has teamed up with Osami Uchibori and Yoshiyuki Nakazato, who were employed at the old Karuizawa and handled the distillation process.
Today we learn that Karuizawa Distillers Inc has partnered with a well-known online Japanese whisky website and online store Dekantā. Dekanta's specialists are to work closely with the new distillery for at least the first 10 years of its operation and co-create official editions of the whiskey produced there, develop the distillery's core offerings, as well as handle independent editions. There will also be a program to sell barrels to private investors.
In the already joint plans of the new Karuizawa and Dekanta is to mature the whisky exclusively in sherry casks. Production to be limited to 250 barrels per year. Coming from the new distillery, the whisky will not be bottled earlier than 10 years of age. All barrels will be matured in warehouses at the distillery and the bottling of the whisky will take place there as well.
Whisky from the original Karuizawa distillery has already made a stunning market career after the plant was decommissioned. Today, prices for individual bottles, appearing occasionally at auction, go into the tens of thousands of pounds, and in April 2017 a bottle of Karuizawa 1960 was auctioned for just over £100,000. With the announced attention to the quality of the distillate from the new distillery and the strictly limited production volume, it is difficult to expect that in 10 years we will see a rash of cheap editions available to the average whisky lover. However, it is nevertheless worth rooting for a new project that puts quality first.
The House of Whisky Online offers several karuizawa's old collector's editions, mainly bottled by the Number One Drinks Company, to which we owe the appearance of this whisky on the market and its brilliant career. We invite you to visit.
[20/12/2022 / Photo: Karuizawa]