Yamazaki

Yamazaki distillery (Japanese: 山崎蒸溜所, Hepburn: Yamazaki jōryūsho) is a Japanese whisky distillery locates in Shimamoto, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. Opened in 1923, and own by Suntory, it is Japan’s first commercial whisky distillery. Seven thousand bottles of unblend malt whisky are on display in its “Whisky Library”. Buy Yamazaki online

The Yamazaki distillery is open in 1923 by Torii Shinjirō (鳥井 信治郎) as the first malt whisky distillery in Japan. The company founder and chairman of Kotobukiya (the predecessor company of Suntory) wants to produce a serious whisky and therefore hires Taketsuru Masataka (竹鶴 政孝), whom he appoints factory director of the Yamazaki distillery in 1924. This descendant of a sake brewing family from the 17th century is in Scotland in 1918. Buy Yamazaki online

He travels to study at Glasgow University and learns how to make Scotch whisky on site. He marries a Scottish girl, Jessie Roberta “Rita” Cowan († 1961), who went to Japan with him in 1920. Under Taketsuru (* 1894) the production of the first whisky was completed in 1929, which was sold as shirofuda (白札, English white label). Due to differences with Torii, Taketsuru left the company in 1934 and founded the Dai-Nippon Kaju KK company , later called Nikka Whisky Distilling, in Hokkaidō in the same year.