Japanese whisky begins with a love story. In 1918 a young Japanese chemist sailed to Scotland to learn how whisky was really made, and came home with both the knowledge and a wife.

Masataka Taketsuru studied at Glasgow and apprenticed in working Scottish distilleries, filling notebooks that would become the founding text of an entire industry. He also met and married Jessie Roberta Cowan, known as Rita, and the two returned to Japan together to build something nobody there had managed before: Scotch-style whisky, made properly, on the other side of the world.

A Little Piece of Scotland in Hokkaido

After helping to establish Japan's first whisky distillery, Taketsuru struck out on his own. He chose Yoichi, on the cold northern island of Hokkaido, precisely because its damp, sea-lashed climate reminded him of Scotland. He even kept coal-fired direct distillation, a difficult, old-fashioned method most of the world has abandoned, because he believed it gave the spirit its muscle.

Two Distilleries, Two Characters

Yoichi gives Nikka its backbone: robust, faintly smoky, coastal. Its sister distillery Miyagikyo, tucked between two rivers, does the opposite, producing softer, fruitier, more floral malt from tall stills. Blending the two is Nikka's signature move, and it is why the whiskies feel both bold and beautifully balanced.

Where to Start

From the Barrel is the one to meet first, a small, stocky bottle punching far above its size, rich and warming at cask-ish strength. For something more unusual, the Coffey Malt is made in continuous stills built for grain but run with malt, giving a silky, honeyed whisky unlike anything from Scotland.

Rita spent the rest of her life in Japan and is still remembered there with real affection. Every bottle of Nikka carries a little of that story: two countries, two people, and a belief that great whisky did not have to come from only one of them.