‘Nobody Really Knew What Went On There’: World’s Oldest Japanese Whisky Discovered in a Warehouse — and a Bottle Can Be Yours for $30,000

The oldest Japanese whisky: Shirakawa 1958 (Photo: Shirakawa Single Malt Japanese Whisky)

Bottles of the oldest  Japanese whisky from the forgotten Shirakawa Distillery were discovered – untouched – in a warehouse and are slated to sell for the approximate cost of $30,000 according to an article released in The Star on Monday.

The spirit is a single-vintage whisky named Shirakawa 1958 and is owned by Takara Shuzo, a Japanese beverage conglomerate that also owns the scotch whisky brand Tomatin in its portfolio.

Tomatin is the first Scotch distillery to be owned by a Japanese company, and the brand just won the highly-coveted “Best In Show,” and “Best Single Malt Scotch Whisky,” titles at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in June.

The scotch distillery’s managing director, Stephen Bremner, played a key role in uncovering the forgotten bottles of Shirakawa 1958.

“Our managing director, Stephen Bremner, who has been working with Takara Shuzo for over 20 years, learned that they used to have their own distillery that made malt whisky,” Scott Adamson, the global brand ambassador and whisky blender for Tomatin, said in an interview with The Star.

According to Adamson, Bremner would inquire about the whisky whenever he met with colleagues from Japan. He would ask if there was any stock left of the single-malt Japanese whisky and his queries were often ignored or met with reluctance.

“If you look at Japanese whisky history books, Shirakawa up until now has been a footnote at best. Nobody really knew what went on there, and no one knew what Shirakawa’s single malt tasted like… until now,” Adamson claimed.

In 2018, Bremner met up with a colleague who told him about a rumored hidden parcel of whisky from Shirakawa Distillery, igniting what would later be a treasure hunt for the spirit.

The team started going through the archives that belonged to Takara Shuzo, and eventually, their digging led somewhere. They were able to find old records from Shirakawa.

In 2019 they discovered a container marked “Shirakawa 1958, malt whisky” housed in a Takara Shuzo warehouse several miles from the distillery. Adamson went on to further emphasize the significance of this find:

“This was a single parcel of malt whisky from a lost, forgotten Japanese distillery which was distilled in 1958, enough for just 1,500 bottles. So there will only ever be one bottling of Shirakawa and this is it!”

Very little is known about this whisky besides the fact that it was aged in casks prior to being transferred to ceramic jars at the distillery, and stainless steel tanks at Kyushu where it was abandoned.

“We can’t be 100% sure if it was aged in Mizunara, but the whisky does have all the notes you would expect from a Mizunara-aged whisky – the incense note, with a kind of cedar and floral element that you don’t get from other types of oak,” Adamson said.

Dave Broom, a whisky writer, went on to taste the spirit and described it as possessing resinous and waxy aromas. He described the palate as grassy, fruity, and layered.

The finish is, according to Broom, “nicely balanced and persistent,” with a mentholated quality.

“Shirakawa 1958 is like a time capsule — a snapshot in time. That’s what tasting this whisky is like — we’re tasting something that does not exist in any other form or in any other realm. So this is truly an incredible whisky,” Adamson concluded.

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