Ichiro's Malt & Grain Limited Edition 2020 / 48.5% / 0.7l

Ichiro Malt & Grain is the creation of Ichiro Akuto, whose blending skills earned him the prestigious title of “Master Blender of the Year” from the International Spirit Challenge judges in 2019. The Akuto family produced whisky from 1946 to 2000 at the Hanyu Distillery. After its closure, Ichiro took over the remaining 400 barrels of whisky, which he soon released as Ichiro's Card Series. The “Card Series” proved to be a market hit, and also provided the capital to build the Chichibu Distillery. It began operating in the spring of 2008 as the first Japanese distillery built in the new millennium. Ichiro Malt & Grain Japanese Blended Whisky is an annual limited edition of just a few hundred bottles, blended from malt and grain whiskies distilled and aged in Japan. It is sometimes confused with Ichiro's Malt & Grain World Blended Whisky, a blend of whiskies produced in various countries and Chichibu's single malt. We do not know the formula for the 2020 edition presented here, in previous ones Ichiro-san used malt whiskies from the Hanyu and Chichibu distilleries and grain whisky from Kawasaki Distillery. In the annual "World Whisky Awards" competition, in three of the last five years, Ichiro's Malt & Grain limited editions have won first place in the category "World's Best Limited Edition Blend"; needless to say, their collector value ends somewhere in the stratosphere.

The World Whisky Awards 2020 jury highlighted the unusual range of flavours and aromas of this whisky – “rich with a subtle hint of sulphur; an explosion of mint accompanied by peat; a powerful drink!”