Togouchi 12 Year Old

It tastes like a Canadian Mountie and a Glasgow girl met at a distant train station for a kiss.

Chugoku Jozo started in 1918 as a distributor of Sake and traditional Japanese liquors. They specialized in all the stuff that happens after distillation, meaning that they purchased raw, young spirit from distillers and then mixed, aged, bottled, and distributed it for themselves. By 1963 they were ready to start brewing their own Sake and released the first finished, aged product in 1967. Today they curate, produce, age, and package a variety of Sakes, Wines, and Whiskies under several brands, including Togouchi.

The Togouchi line of Whiskies gets it’s name from the town in which it is aged — or more specifically, the unused train station tunnel that has been repurposed into a Whisky aging warehouse. Togouchi 12 Year Old is a blended Whisky of approximately 40% Scottish Single Malt and 60% grain spirit from Canada that has slept in that abandoned train tunnel for a dozen years. So the spirit flowed from Canada and Scotland, but it was born and raised in Japan.