Shirakawa 1958

Shirakawa 1958 Single Malt Japanese Whisky - 70cl, 49% abv

The Exceptional taste of Liquid History, the World’s Rarest Japanese Whisky -  Shirakawa 1958.

 
Shirakawa 1958 is a single malt whisky from the lost Japanese distillery, Shirakawa, which was located 200km North of Tokyo, Japan.

The whisky produced was rumoured to be exquisite, but destined only for blending and never to be captured as a single malt until now, with a collaboration between Tomatin Distillery and Takara Shuzo.

The Shirakawa Distillery was built in the Fukushima Prefecture, in 1939 by Daikoku Budoshu and purchased by Takara Shuzo in 1947.
Operating for nearly six and a half decades, it produced malt whisky between 1951 - 1969, one of the first distilleries in Japan to do so. The vast majority of the whisky produced was used in Takara Shuzo’s flagship ‘King’ blended whisky brand. The Shirakawa Distillery then was demolished in 2003.

Stephen Bremner, Managing Director of Tomatin Distillery Co. Ltd. had become intrigued by parent company Takara Shuzo’s history of malt whisky production in Japan and why so little was known about this aspect of the company’s history. Determined to uncover more, he pieced together anecdotal information from previous employees about whisky production and searched for long lost documents that might shed some light on Shirakawa’s single malt Japanese whisky making past.

The final remaining parcel was identified in Takara Shuzo’s Kurokabegura in 2019. The liquid had been distilled in 1958, aged in cask, then transferred to ceramic jars at the distillery. When Shirakawa closed, it was put into stainless steel tanks at Takara Shuzo’s factory in Kyushu where it lay untouched until now...

This rare discovery brought further mystery both for the liquid unearthed, as with the history of the distillery itself. The precise age of the whisky cannot be specified; although it is clear the liquid was matured in oak casks, the type of cask and length of maturation remains unknown to this day. Though production details are unclear, it is from a time when the distillery used predominantly Japanese malted barley and Mizunara oak casks.

The 1958 vintage, bottled at 49% abv by Takara Shuzo Co.,Ltd in Japan, will exist as the only official single malt ever to be released from Shirakawa Distillery and the earliest known single vintage Japanese whisky ever bottled.