Yamazaki (Suntory), Pure Malt 12YO

Suntory built Yamazaki in 1923 where the Katsura, Uji and Kizu meet outside Kyoto — Japan's first whisky distillery. Shinjiro Torii chose the site for its water, prized long before he arrived: the tea master Sen no Rikyū is said to have worked nearby to draw on it, and 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 distilling at Glasgow University 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 both directly and indirectly heated stills, 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 2015, when the Sherry Cask 2013 became the first Japanese whisky named world whisky of the year in the Whisky Bible; demand for aged Japanese stock has outstripped supply ever since. Yamazaki has set the world auction record for a bottle of Japanese whisky more than once, most recently in May 2026.