Ichiro’s Malt and Mars Whisky releasing blended malts using swapped stocks

Hot on the heels of the release of Japan’s first-ever blended malt whiskies made via stock swapping, two big names in Japanese whisky have announced their own bottles: Ichiro’s Malt Double Distilleries Chichibu x Komagatake 2021 and Mars Whisky Malt Duo Komagatake x Chichibu 2021.

It was only a few weeks ago that Saburomaru and Nagahama announced the first bottles of blended malt whiskies in Japan to use swapped stocks.

But they weren’t the only ones that had the idea. Venture Whisky’s Ichiro’s Malt and Hombo Shuzo’s Mars Whisky exchanged stocks back in 2015, and the two bottles just announced are the results of that joint project.

That back in 2015 part is extremely important, because they’ve been aging the casks at their respective warehouses since then. This means that the blend contains “Chichibu-aged Komagatake” for the Ichiro’s Malt release, and “Komagatake-aged Chichibu” for the Mars Whisky release. Should be very interesting.

Ichiro’s Malt Double Distilleries Chichibu x Komagatake 2021 weighs in at 53% abv, and will be priced at 16,500 yen after tax for 700ml. 10,200 bottles of this one are being released.

Mars Whisky Malt Duo Komagatake x Chichibu 2021 is 54% abv, and shares the same 16,500 yen price tag and 700ml bottle. 10,918 of this one are being made available.

Both are slated for release within the next week or so. In the case of the Mars release, Hombo Shuzo is doing an online lottery-based sale, and you can enter from April 24th at 10AM JST on this page.