The late Octavio Paz, poet, author and Mexico’s most ardent champion of the surreal, once claimed that copying is the beginning of creativity. I am paraphrasing here, but it’s a wonderfully simple proposition: when it comes to writing a poem, painting a picture or, indeed, making a style of whisky, it is impossible to duplicate that which has come before. Make a copy and you instantly create.
Nothing, in this respect, could be truer of Japanese whisky making, which in less than a hundred years has taken a Scottish form and turned it into a style that, while paying due homage to its precursor, melds science to that of a design sensibility that presents depth with the very lightest of touches. A Japanese distiller making whisky in Japan could not hope to make anything but a Japanese whisky, such is the influence of tradition, climate, need and desire.
Thus is it that, in 2014, Suntory’s Yamazaki Sherry Cask won Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible’s world’s best whisky title. It’s a malt. It’s made in the Scottish tradition, with Scottish malted barley. But it’s not Scottish. It’s Japanese. It’s a Japanese malt whisky, and one so influential that, like many a Japanese whisky, it informs how we read, understand and taste Scottish whiskies. The supposed copy precedes its template; the successor, its precursor. Paz the surrealist would be delighted.
Japan’s love affair with whisky begins with the story of an American captain, his ship and the gift of a cask – delivered in 1854, to the feet of a living god. Whisky, one supposes, did what whisky does best: the Emperor gave holy assent, Japan opened its gates, and scotch was in.
In fact, when Commodore Matthew C Perry made good his promise to force it into trade, Japan was yet to replace the ruling shogun with the young and more western-friendly Emperor Meiji, then more figurehead than holy appointee.
It would take another 14 years and an insurrection before the west got its way. In the meantime, the odds on Perry’s liquid softener – bourbon or scotch, no one’s sure – making it intact, from ship to god, were slim to none. To be clear, the whisky was (probably) nicked.
Nonetheless, Perry did succeed. The Tokugawa Shogunate did acquiesce. As it happens, torn apart by civil war, America was unable to capitalise on its early success, and so Britain – and therefore scotch – was able to fill the breach, forging a special relationship that saw Scottish whisky, unobtainable and therefore extraordinary, become a Japanese status symbol, a rare and special gift, a drink that was easily assimilated into its age-old drinking cultures.
Taxed to the hilt, its relative scarcity birthed a whole industry of spirits rectifiers, all cashing in on the new westernised taste, and it is out of this early milieu that Japan was able to set about forging its own whisky-making tradition.
BIRTH OF A NEW TRADITION
While there is some evidence to suggest the influence of much lesser known contemporaries, Japanese whisky owes its success to a history set in motion by the dreams of two men: a young chemist, Masataka Taketsuru, and Shinjiro Torii, both of whom wanted to make whisky themselves – their own Japanese whisky.
Briefly, in 1919, Taketsuru was sent by his firm to Scotland in order to learn the trade and so return and begin to make whisky in its name. Married, his Scottish bride, Rita, in tow, Taketsuru returned to find his employer had given up on starting a whisky distillery. He was subsequently hired by Torii, and in 1923 helped found Japan’s first whisky distillery, now Suntory’s Yamazaki. Distillation began in 1924 and the rest, as they say, is history, though it’s not quite as neat a story as you might think, the pair parting over their first creation: Shirofuda.
The details as to exactly how are shrouded in good manners, but the why of it is perfectly clear. Torii was after a lighter, more subtly peated whisky, Taketsuru a heavyweight. The market sided with Torii: Shirofuda was, as he had predicted, way too rich for the Japanese palate. It bombed. Taketsuru looks to have been sidelined, and left the company when he could. He would go on to found a juice and cider company, which morphed into producing apple brandy – before settling into whisky production at Yoichi, still Japan’s most northern distillery. Taketsuru’s new company was eventually renamed Nikka.
A PAIR OF GIANTS
Today, Suntory and Nikka have two major distilleries apiece (Yamazaki and Hakushu, Yoichi and Miyagikyo), as well as Chita (Suntory) and Tochigi (Nikka), their dedicated grain distilleries. The first and also biggest of Japan’s whisky makers, they produce the vast majority of Japanese whisky. It’s a remarkable story, though nothing like plain sailing, especially in the beginning. However, if things got off to a relatively slow start for both, then the war brought growing custom, as did Japan’s economic miracle, while a vibrant and ever-changing bar culture has periodically helped push things on and through the inevitable generational backlash.
At the same time, the competition has not fared nearly as well, with a number of eminent distilleries falling foul of Japan’s 1990s economic meltdown. International attention and the upturn in all matters whisky means things are much better now, and the number of distilleries is, once again, on the rise. Old or new, they are Fuji-Gotemba, Shinshu, Chichibu and Eigashima, though it’s going to be years before all but Gotemba will be able to compete in terms of age and volume of stock. Prized whiskies from closed or dismantled distilleries include Karuizawa and Hanyu. The latter is a fine example of a distillery closed partially on account of its whisky being thought of as not good, only to discover that it ages beautifully.
A WHISKY DESIGNED
While different both in themselves and from the rest of the competition, Suntory’s Yamazaki and Hakushu distilleries serve, in their own ways, as perfect examples of what makes Japanese whisky of its own.
In keeping with an ethos that emphasises the new as much as it does the old, each has happily de-rigged and rebuilt itself, and more than once – this in an industry that, according to urban lore, insists on replacing a knackered still with its exact replica, dents and all. Considering the significance of distillery character, on the new make, and therefore on the final product, the willingness to tear down the old and start afresh speaks volumes. For Suntory, risking the new is an integral part of what it means to make very good whisky.
And through all this, so runs a tradition of absolute self-sufficiency. Unlike their Scottish counterparts, Japanese producers do not trade whiskies for blending purposes. Meaning, if trading with each other is not an option, and buying in from abroad is unsustainable, then the only answer is to make it yourself. To wit, both Yamazaki and Hakushu use multiple levels of peated and unpeated barley, multiple yeasts, multiple stills, multiple new makes, multiple wood types, multiple casks, the sum being vast theatres of whisky-making variables, the outcomes of which would test a computer, and yet neither crumples under the weight of the thought that goes into its making. On the contrary, their whiskies emerge considered, and beautiful, and utterly unique – and there are lots of them.
Together, Suntory and Nikka are in a league of two when it comes to options, but the competition, whether mothballed or today’s current crop, are renowned for whiskies equally fine, equally sought after. The world’s best blended malt at the 2013 International Spirits Challenge went not to Suntory or Nikka, but rather to Shinshu’s economically entitled Mars Maltage 3 + 25. Chichibu Distillery, meanwhile, new and beautifully thought through, is putting out young whiskies that promise real greatness. There are other horses in this race, and provided the market holds, there may be more to come. The world can barely wait.