Ichiro's Malt Wine Wood Reserve Blended Malt Whisky 700ml | 46.5% ABV

Wine Wood Reserve, or WWR, is a wine-cask-led blend assembled at Chichibu Distillery. It combines Chichibu malt whisky with selected malt whiskies from outside Japan, all shaped through maturation in a range of wine barrels. It is part of the familiar Leaf Series and is bottled at 46.5% ABV.

Chichibu began production in 2008, four years after Ichiro Akuto founded Venture Whisky Ltd. in 2004. The distillery is known for maintaining hands-on techniques including floor malting and direct-fired stills, alongside investment in local barley cultivation — a level of control rare even among craft producers.

Ichiro Akuto has worked with wine casks from Japan and Europe across many releases. Here, the casks bring red-fruit richness and tannic structure to the malt without turning the whisky into a single-cask or single-distillery expression. This is a blended malt whisky, not a Chichibu single malt.

The nose shows raspberry, currant, almond, marzipan and coconut with liquorice and star anise. Red berries, dried fig, citrus and milk chocolate build across the palate, supported by pepper, light tannin and darker cocoa. The finish is warming and gently drying, with lingering chocolate, spice and a faint smoky edge.

WWR suits drinkers who enjoy wine-cask influence but still want the malt and blending structure to remain visible.

Within the Leaf Series, it is the fruit-forward counterpoint to the more aromatic Mizunara Wood Reserve and the oak-and-heritage emphasis of Double Distilleries.