Karuizawa

Karuizawa was built in 1955 by the wine company Daikoku Budoshu, on the southern slopes of Mount Asama, one of Japan's most active volcanoes. The site had been a winery. Production began in the mid-1950s on four small stills.

The whisky was made in the Scottish manner and from Scottish barley, famously Golden Promise, a rich and low-yielding variety. Most of it went into sherry casks in an ivy-covered warehouse on the mountainside. The result was whisky bottled at unusually high strengths for its age.

Distilling stopped on the last day of 2000 and never resumed; the buildings came down in 2016. In 2011 Kirin sold the last of the casks to the Number One Drinks Company, and it was those releases, bottled cask by cask, that turned a distillery few had heard of into a name collectors follow. The supply is fixed and shrinking, which is why single casks from Karuizawa are among the most sought-after in Japanese whisky.