Distillation

Four distilleries, four completely different answers to the same question: how do you coax whisky out of fermented mash? In Central Japan, the range spans from two small copper pot stills to a single plant running four different distillation systems at once.

Chichibu stays deliberately small. Just two pot stills, nothing more, both copper and built for classic double distillation. For a distillery that started from scratch in 2008, that was the only workable size, and it has stayed that way ever since.

Hakushu and Mars Shinshu work like most malt distilleries in Japan: first a wash still for the rough run, then a spirit still that sharpens the character. Both distill twice, in copper pot stills whose shapes have been tuned to their respective house styles over decades.

Fuji Gotemba blows this framework wide open. The distillery makes malt whisky in classic pot stills, but alongside that produces three distinct types of grain whisky, each on its own equipment: a continuous column still, a beer-still system with a doubler in the style of American bourbon plants, and a kettle-and-column combination. No other distillery in the region builds so many whisky styles under one roof.

The cut, the moment the distiller separates the usable heart from the heads and tails, plays out differently at each of these plants. At Chichibu's small pot stills, it's adjusted by hand; at Fuji Gotemba's columns, the separation runs on fixed technical parameters. Both paths lead to whisky, just by completely different routes.