The Yamazaki whiskey distillery, the oldest in Japan, turns 100 this year, as the country’s most famous bottles fetch exorbitant prices due to soaring demand and prolonged shortages.
Located at the foot of a mountain near Kyoto, in the west of the country, 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 the foreign demand and the scarcity of the best valued bottles that have triggered prices in recent years.
The global craze for Japanese whiskeys has led to a “spectacular” increase in Yamazaki production over the last twenty years, says Takahisa Fujii, manager of the distillery. 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.
Supply quotas for bars
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 finding one of his favourites.
Junpei Kusunoki, manager of Tokyo Whiskey Library, a bar in Omotesando, a posh district of the Japanese capital, is also experiencing shortages.
According to Takahisa Fujii, the secret to the quality of Yamazaki whiskeys lies in the particularly pure water from the region of the distillery, whose reputation dates back to the 16th century, when the famous tea master Sen no Rikyu settled there.
Japan now has around 100 distilleries, and the country’s reputation for the quality of its products helps boost the reputation of its whiskeys, according to critic Mamoru Tsuchiya.
A “lost-in-translation effect”
Behind this success, however, lies a difficult past, as the Japanese whiskey industry has long suffered from falling domestic consumption, after a peak in 1983.
This recession lasted “more than twenty years” and its impact on the industry was “profound,” recalls Nobuyuki Akiyama, director of Suntory’s whiskey marketing division.
The situation did not improve until the early 2000s, when Nikka Whiskey brand Yoichi 10 and Yamazaki 12 were honored with prestigious global awards. And 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 loaded with irony.
Whiskeys planned 30 years in advance
Domestic sales have also picked up, thanks in part to a return to fashion for “highballs,” whiskeys elongated with sparkling water.
Broadcast on Japanese television in 2014-2015, a TV series about the romantic life of Masataka Taketsuru, the founder of Nikka Whiskey, also helped spark renewed interest in this brandy in the archipelago. The success was too sudden for manufacturers, who must plan their production decades in advance.
In the short term, it seems that sales will continue to increase. Japanese whiskey exports reached 56 billion yen (about 400 million euros) in 2022, 14 times more than ten years ago.
Source: BFM TV
