insights from frontier Japan

More and more businesses in Hokkaido are taking up the challenge of producing high-quality whisky using local resources, making the most of the environment – ideal for producing barley and ageing unblended whisky – with which it is blessed.

Whisky manufacturer Kenten Co., Ltd. Akkeshi Distillery (Akkeshi, eastern Hokkaido) will begin selling its new product, ‘Akkeshi Single Malt Japanese Whisky Boshu’ on May 28. It is the first Hokkaido product to be sold under the name of ‘Japanese whisky’, which is proof of it being distilled in Japan, and approximately ten thousand 700-ml bottles will be produced.

Hakkaisan Brewery (Minamiuonuma City, Niigata Prefecture) is a brewing company known for its Japanese sake "Hakkaisan", but on March 24, it also started producing whiskey in the "Niseko Distillery" facilities it constructed in the town of Niseko. This summer the company plans on adding a newly constructed sales shop area to the distillery and refining it as a hub for tourism.

To make mizunara oak casks for whiskey production at Kenten Jitsugyo Akkeshi Distillery, lumber harvesting was conducted in Hokkaido prefectural forest area in Akkeshi Town, located in east Hokkaido's Kushiro region.

Sapporo bar owner Ikkei Honma started an enterprise to age Hokkaido-made Western alcohol and sake along the ocean floor. After amassing financing through crowdfunding, he will submerge alcoholic beverages in the Tsugaru Strait starting in January of next year, age them there for about a year, and then market them as a new Hokkaido flavour.

On August 28, harvesting started in eastern Hokkaido's Akkeshi Town in for two-rowed barley to be used in making whiskey.