NIKKA

Born in 1894 into a family of sake producers, Masataka Taketsuru is regarded as the father of Japanese whisky. After training as a chemist, he was hired by the Settsu Shuzo company, which sent him to Scotland in 1918 to learn the craft. There, he developed a passion for whisky and decided to dedicate his life to it. In 1934, he built Yoichi, his first distillery, on the island of Hokkaido. His growing success later enabled him to establish a second one in 1969 near Sendai: Miyagikyo. It is from the single malts of these two distilleries that the Nikka Whisky group has developed its entire range of Japanese whiskies. Official website