2023-07-22 18:32:34
Yamazaki whiskey distillery, Japan’s oldest, turns 100 this year, as the country’s most renowned bottles fetch exorbitant prices, due to growing demand and long-lasting shortages.
• Read also: Japan: an app to identify pain in cats
Located at the foot of a mountain near Kyoto (west), the distillery was created by Shinjiro Torii, the founder of the Suntory beverage group who wanted to develop a whiskey suitable for the Japanese palate.
But it is above all foreign demand and the scarcity of the most highly rated bottles that have caused prices to soar in recent years.
In 2020, a rare bottle of Yamazaki 55 sold for around $800,000 at an auction in Hong Kong, a historic record for a Japanese whisky.
The global craze for Japanese whiskeys has led to a “spectacular” increase in production at Yamazaki over the past twenty years, says Takahisa Fujii, the distillery manager.
Suntory has also decided this year to invest ten billion yen (65 million euros) in its Yamazaki and Hakushu distilleries to increase their production capacities.
But at the Yamazaki Distillery, visitors hoping to stock up on aged whiskey often leave frustrated, like Peter Kaleta, a bar manager in Poland, dejected at not having found one of his favourites.
AFP
Rated bars
Junpei Kusunoki, manager of Tokyo Whiskey Library, a bar in Omotesando – another chic district of the Japanese capital – is also suffering from the shortages.
«Ya a share [d’approvisionnement, NDLR] for the Omotesando area, it is therefore a war once morest competitors. We try everything to seize” the most coveted bottles, he says.
According to Mr. Fujii, the secret of the quality of Yamazaki whiskeys lies in the particularly pure water of the region of the distillery, whose reputation dates back to the 16th century, when the famous tea master Sen no Rikyu settled there.
“You cannot produce a good spirit without quality water,” he recalls, adding that the surrounding humidity and mist contribute to the maturation of the whisky.
AFP
Japan now has around 100 distilleries, and the country’s reputation for the quality of its products helps boost the notoriety of its whiskeys, according to critic Mamoru Tsuchiya.
Behind this success, however, hides a difficult past, the Japanese whiskey industry having long suffered from the decline of domestic consumption, following a peak reached in 1983.
This downturn lasted “more than twenty years” and its impact on the industry was “profound”, recalls Nobuyuki Akiyama, director of the marketing division of whiskey at Suntory.
Effet «Lost in Translation»
The situation only improved from the early 2000s, when Nikka Whiskey’s Yoichi 10 and Yamazaki 12 were awarded prestigious world prizes.
In 2003 Suntory’s Hibiki 17 appeared in the hit movie Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola, in which actor Bill Murray promotes himself in a cult scene full of irony.
Domestic sales have also recovered, partly thanks to the return of the fashion for “highballs”, whiskey diluted with sparkling water.
Broadcast on Japanese television in 2014-2015, a television series on the romantic life of Masataka Taketsuru, the founder of Nikka Whisky, also helped to spark renewed interest in this brandy in the archipelago.
AFP
The success was too sudden for manufacturers, who must plan their production decades in advance.
“We have for example the Hibiki 30, for which we have to think regarding how many bottles we will have to produce in 30 years,” says Akiyama, adding that it is “impossible to predict the market” so far ahead.
In the shorter term, sales seem set to continue to increase. Japanese whiskey exports reached 56 billion yen (regarding 400 million euros) in 2022, 14 times more than ten years ago.
1690060265
#rare #bottle #whiskey