Chita

You may not have heard of the Chita distillery before. It has been previously nicknamed The Silent Distillery for that very reason - you never really hear that much about it. However, if you’ve tried any of Suntory’s blended whiskies, you’ve tasted whisky from Chita, as that is where the grain portion of the blends come from.

The Chita distillery was founded in 1972 in the city of Chita in the Aichi Prefecture in Japan, by Suntory’s second Master Blender, Keizo Saji. Though it’s not quite as picturesque as some other Japanese distilleries (it is located on a rather beautiful coastline however), Chita is kitted out to produce top-class grain whisky. Interestingly, the distillery utilizes a few different production methods with their column stills to produce different types of grain whisky. Heavy-type grain whisky goes through two columns, medium-type goes through three columns and clean-type goes through four.

Releases from Chita are few and far between. There was previously a Suntory Single Grain Chita with a black label, though this has since been discontinued. In 2015, The Chita single grain was launched, presented in a similar style to Suntory’s Yamazaki and Hakushu single malt whiskies. There was also an indie bottling of Chita single grain from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, which bore the name “A complete revelation”.