The Ichiro’s Malt brand is produced by Japanese firm, Venture Whisky, and is named after their founder, Ichiro Akuto. Venture Whisky was established in 2004 after Ichiro acquired the remaining unblended stocks of single malt from his grandfather’s Hanyu distillery. Ichiro’s Malt was born the following year, with the release of the original ‘Card’ series single casks of Hanyu. The company then opened its own distillery in 2008, the increasingly sought-after Chichibu. In addition to bottling these two single malts, the Ichiro’s Malt brand has also produced a number of sought after blended whiskies like this over the years.

Rumoured to be a vatting of the closed Japanese distillery of Hanyu with that of the relatively young distillery of Chichibu, where this whisky was matured, married and bottled. The whiskies were matured in Mizunara oak casks (rare Japanese oak).

Given that this was first released in 2010 and and Hanyu has become thinner on the ground since, we can only assume the Hanyu content has or will eventually be removed. When that will happen or if it has already happened is unclear.