Nikka , Japan’s second-largest whisky producer, has a history that is intertwined with the life of its founder, Masataka Taketsuru (1894–1979), distiller at Japan’s first dedicated whisky distillery, Yamazaki. Unhappy at being moved to run Kotobukiya’s brewery in Yokohama, he decided to set up his own whisky firm. See Suntory and Taketsuru, Masataka.
In July of 1934, he and his Scottish wife moved to the town of Yoichi on the island of Hokkaido and founded Dai Nippon Kaju company, meaning “the great Japanese juice company” (the name Nikka comes from the first two letters of Nippon and Kaju).
In 1969 Nikka, still under Taketsuru’s control, built its second distillery, Miyagikyo, which since 1999 has also made grain whisky using the Nishinomiya stills. A decade later, the firm’s main grain plant was built in Tochigi, and ten years later it bought Scottish distiller Ben Nevis.
Nikka has been a subsidiary of Asahi since 2001. In that year its Yoichi ten-year old single-cask malt whisky won UK-based Whisky Magazine’s “Best of the Best” competition, beating all of its Scottish and American rivals. It is considered to be one of the catalysts that triggered international interest in Japanese whisky.
Broom, Dave. The Way of Whisky: A Journey around Japanese Whisky. London: Mitchell Beazley, 2017.
By: Dave Broom