Broom is adamant that, though it may be unfamiliar, you don’t need to be scared of Japanese whiskey. To that end, he gave me a crash course on whiskey’s so-called newcomer, and guided me through its surprisingly long history—a history that dates back to two visionary distillers almost a century ago. Shinjiro Torii and Masataka Taketsuru started out as partners, but parted ways to found the two biggest whiskey producers in Japan: Torii’s company became Suntory, and Taketsuru’s is known today as Nikka Whisky Distilling Co.
Modeled on Scotch
“It was 1919 or 1920 that Shinjiro Torii bought a plot of land between Kyoto and Osaka and built a distillery in this little town called Yamazaki.
"But then he thinks, ‘Oh my God, who’s going to make this whiskey for me?’
"Enter Masataka Taketsuru. Taketsuru had been sent by another company to Glasgow University to study chemistry and crack the secret of how scotch whiskey was made. ... But when he returns to Japan in 1923, his company’s gone bust, and here’s Torii looking for a distiller.”
But It’s Not Your Grandfather’s Whiskey
“After the first attempt to make whiskey, in 1928—the first one that launched—and it wasn’t a success because it was too heavy, it was too smoky, it was too powerful. For whiskey to be successful in a domestic market, it had to appeal to a Japanese palate, which is lighter, it had to complement Japanese food, which is more delicate and more intense, and it had to suit the Japanese climate, which tends to be really humid in summer.”
There’s a Reason You Haven’t Seen It Before
“This assumption that Japanese whiskey is new simply isn’t true. But especially since the 1950s, the Japanese have had such a love of whiskey that they drank it all themselves. So they had no need for export. They only started exporting around the turn of the century, actually. The dawn of the millennium is when you start to see Japanese whiskey exported in some volume, but even then, it’s not massive. So it’s only just now that suddenly the world wakes up to the fact of this industry.”
The Mountain Stream and the Clear, Still Pond
“If you put a scotch single malt next to a Japanese single malt, you’ll notice that the Scottish single malt has got a nutty, cereal character within it. It’s kind of a defining character of scotch. Basically every single malt from Scotland has got some element of this cereal character.
"Japanese whiskey doesn’t. Japanese distillers go to some length to ensure that that character isn’t there. Which means that the flavors are more intense, they’re not just more delicate, they’re more lifted and more ordered. The analogy I use is that if you think of a Scottish single malt as being like a mountain stream bouncing over the rocks, and you can’t quite see the bottom as the water is rushing past. ... Whereas Japanese whiskey is more like a still pond that you can see right into. It kind of offers itself up totally to you.”
Balance Through Blending
“In Scotland, you’ve got 150 single malt distilleries, and distillers swap between themselves. You know, a distiller wants something smoky and they don’t have something smoky in their own estate, so they swap ... because each distillery has a really intense, individual character. ... That doesn’t happen in Japan. Each distillery, of the big distilleries, is set up to produce different characters at one site. It’s completely different from the Scottish approach. You have a whole number of different approaches and these are blended together; you get more of a totality. For me, scotch single malt, which I love obviously, it’s kind of pointy and intense, like a triangle, whereas Japanese single malts are more of a circle.”
