Yamazaki

Suntory built Yamazaki in 1923 where the Katsura, Uji and Kizu meet outside Kyoto — Japan's first malt whisky distillery. Shinjiro Torii chose the site for its water, prized long before he arrived: Japan's environment ministry now lists it among the country's hundred finest. Torii wanted a whisky for the Japanese palate rather than a copy of Scotch, and brought in Masataka Taketsuru — who had studied chemistry at Glasgow and learned distilling in Scottish distilleries, and married a Scot — to run the distillery from 1924. Taketsuru left a decade later to found Nikka.

A rebuild in the late 1980s gave Yamazaki wooden and stainless washbacks and a variety of still configurations, so that one site could produce an unusual range of malt styles. Maturation runs across American, Spanish and Japanese oak, including scarce mizunara.

Its standing turned global in late 2014, when the Sherry Cask 2013 was named world whisky of the year in the following year's Whisky Bible — the first Japanese whisky to take the title. Demand for aged Japanese stock has outstripped supply ever since.

The bottles behind that reputation are the oldest the distillery has released. The 55 Year Old took the world auction record for a Japanese whisky at Bonhams in Hong Kong in August 2020, at HK$6.2 million. A 50 Year Old sold at Bonhams in May 2026 for HK$8.25 million.