Get it while you can…if you can

I’ve only once tried the unicorn of single malts, the Port Ellen of Japan, but I have never forgotten the taste: thick and oily, richly sherried and smoky. Marcin Miller, the former editor of Whisky Magazine, had a similar experience when he first tasted Karuizawa. “I was blown away by the richness, concentration and power.”

Miller was in Japan looking for unusual whiskies to import to Britain. In 2006, he struck gold at Karuizawa distillery in Nagano prefecture. He tasted 69 casks with his business partner David Croll and Dave Broom, the esteemed spirits writer. There was only one he didn’t want to bottle on the spot. But Miller also noticed they weren’t distilling. So on the spur of the moment, he and Croll tried to buy the distillery. As you do. They were rebuffed but were, after years of negotiations, allowed to buy the entire inventory of 364 casks. They knew the whisky was superb but could they persuade the rest of the world?

The Karuizawa distillery in Miyota Nagano prefecture

Karuizawa was never built to make a luxury product. Founded in 1955 by the Mercian conglomerate, it was intended to produce malt for blends at a time when Japan was booming and had acquired a taste for whisky. But somehow the distillery did everything right. It used peated Golden Promise barley imported from Scotland — a variety previously used by Macallan but superseded by more efficient strains. It didn’t produce much alcohol but it made a richly flavoured wash. The stills were squat, producing a heavy spirit. Until the late 1990s, Karuizawa used only sherry casks for ageing. And the climate allowed the whisky to maintain its strength over long periods.

None of this was appreciated by Mercian’s executives. When demand for Japanese whisky plummeted during the so-called Lost Decade after the asset bubble burst in 1990, they unsentimentally stopped production in 2000. At the time Miller visited, Mercian was being sold to brewing giant Kirin which had no interest in the distillery.

The 30 year old Noh whisky distilled in 1977 and bottled in 2008

Had Miller and Croll not stepped in, casks dating back to the 1960s would have disappeared into anonymous blends. Instead, their company, Number One Drinks, released its first whisky in 2006 — a single cask from 1971, priced at £65 a bottle. Even so, one retailer called it a ridiculous amount to pay for a whisky no one had heard of.

But once people tasted it and heard the story, demand took off. Today a 1971 Karuizawa will set you back around £10,000. A vatting of ‘90s malts called Spirit of Asama released in 2012 for £80 now costs about £2,000. In 2020, a bottle of the 1960 vintage sold at auction for £363,000. Miller has now reached the end of his supply; the final release, a vatting of malts from the 1960s through 1990s called Once in a Lifetime, is priced at £19,500. And in March 2026, collector Sukhinder Singh auctioned the last two remaining casks at Christie’s for £4.25 million.

Karuizawa single cask malt whisky distilled in 1981

There will be no more. The distillery was demolished in 2016 though the story isn’t quite over. Two rival companies emerged, both claiming to be heirs to the original: Karuizawa Whisky Co., which began distilling in 2022 with a former Karuizawa manager as its distiller, and Karuizawa Distillers, with Kavalan’s Ian Chang as master blender. Neither operates on the original site or uses any original equipment. “Neither of them are the real Karuizawa, are they?” Miller said.

If you’re looking for the genuine article, Miller recommends searching out malts distilled post-1980, when a distillery refit brought a significant step up in quality. These can be found for around £4,000. Prices have eased from their 2023 peak but unlike other collectible whiskies, Karuizawa is genuinely, irreversibly rare. There will never be any more — so if you get the chance to try it, jump.

Henry Jeffreys is the author of “Vines in a Cold Climate: The People Behind the English Wine Revolution”