A brewer, a Canadian distiller and a Scotch house choose Gotemba.

The Fuji Gotemba distillery began as a partnership. Japanese Wikipedia records that Kirin-Seagram was founded in August 1972 as a joint venture of three companies: the Japanese brewer Kirin, the North American distiller Joseph E. Seagram & Sons and the Scotch whisky house Chivas Brothers, the company behind Chivas Regal. Kirin’s own news releases from 2020, 2022 and 2023 begin the story the same way, saying that its whisky business started with the founding of Kirin-Seagram in 1972.

The distillery itself followed a year later. Kirin says the Fuji Gotemba distillery has operated since 1973; Japanese Wikipedia dates the completion of the site to August of that year, and a 2024 report in Impress Watch gives November 1973 as the start of operations, which is why Kirin marked a 50th anniversary in November 2023. The site is in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, on the southeastern slopes of Mount Fuji; English Wikipedia puts it about 620 metres above sea level and says the town was chosen because its climate was felt to be close to Scotland’s.

Kirin’s own description of the place leans on the mountain. Its distillery page says the site draws on Mount Fuji’s underground water, records an average annual temperature of about 13°C and notes that fog is frequent through the year; a rooftop deck on the visitor building looks out over the mountain and the town. Kirin says the distillery handles everything from brewing to bottling on the same site.

Pale lettering, a white label and a mountain in the glass.

The distillery’s name came first, and the brand built on it came later. Japanese Wikipedia says the company’s first original whisky, The Fuji-Gotemba, went on sale in February 2004, followed in September 2005 by the Fujisanroku series, whose name means the foot of Mount Fuji. The current brand, simply called Fuji, arrived in 2020.

Kirin Brewery’s release of 17 March 2020 described the packaging of the first Fuji whisky, a single grain, in unusual detail. The label is a calm white, with the kanji 富士 printed faintly and the English name FUJI laid over it to give a sense of depth; Kirin says excess decoration was removed in pursuit of a Japanese “beauty of subtraction.” The base of the bottle is moulded in the shape of Mount Fuji. The same release introduced Riku, a grain-led whisky meant for any style of serving, whose label Kirin describes as plain black lettering on white, with serving suggestions from the blender printed on the side.

When the single malt joined in 2023, Kirin’s release of 13 March that year said its label pairs a kanji Fuji logo and a snow-covered Mount Fuji on a traditional Japanese-style material, and called the bottle with the mountain-shaped base the symbol of the brand. In September 2026 Kirin announced a 12-year-old single grain, the first Fuji release with an age statement of that length, with “Aged 12 Years” engraved on the bottle, gold-foil styling and, for the first time in the brand, a shoulder label.

Design and documentation.

The seven names in this group are all Japanese whisky distilleries: Fuji Gotemba, Nagahama, Akkeshi, Shizuoka, Saburomaru, Sakurao and Yuza. Some sit inside long-established drinks companies, some were built by sake or shochu makers adding a new spirit to an old business, and others are newer ventures built specifically to make whisky, in regions far from one another.

The phrase “Japanese whisky” on a label carries more weight than it used to. In 2021 the Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association introduced a voluntary labelling standard, with a grace period that ended in 2024, under which, English Wikipedia says, a whisky sold as Japanese must be fermented, distilled, matured and bottled in Japan. A distillery’s identity therefore rests not only on its label and its name but on where its spirit is actually made, how long it has been aged and what, if anything, has been blended in.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded the distillery and when, who owns it now, where its whisky is distilled and matured, and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From a joint venture to Kirin’s own grain and malt.

The partnership did not last. Japanese Wikipedia says that in July 2002 the joint venture, by then with Pernod Ricard, was dissolved, the company became wholly owned by Kirin Brewery and it took its present name, Kirin Distillery. Kirin has wholly owned the business since then; since a 2007 reorganisation, Kirin Brewery itself has sat under the holding company Kirin Holdings, the same source says.

What sets the site apart in Kirin’s telling is that it makes both malt and grain whisky. Kirin says the distillery brought in Scotch, American and Canadian production methods and combined them with its own brewing know-how, and its distillery page says grain whisky is the site’s main feature, made in three types of still. The 2024 Impress Watch report names the three styles of grain spirit as bourbon-type, Canadian-type and Scotch-type. Kirin has also added wooden washbacks to widen the range of spirit it can make, its distillery page says. The master blender is Jota Tanaka, Japanese Wikipedia records.

The Fuji brand grew in stages. The single grain went on sale in Japan’s bars and restaurants on 21 April 2020; Kirin took it to China and Australia from April 2022 and added a single blended Fuji, made only from malt and grain distilled at Gotemba, on 7 June 2022. The single malt followed on 16 May 2023, completing what Kirin calls the distillery’s flagship line of single malt, single grain and single blended whiskies. A 50th-anniversary single grain, blended from spirit distilled in every decade since the 1970s, went on sale at the distillery shop in June 2024.

For a design guide, Fuji Gotemba shows how a large company can let one mountain carry a whole brand: the name, the pale kanji on a white label and the bottle base shaped like Fuji all point at the same view. Compare it with Hakushu, a forest distillery that also began in 1973, and with Kirin’s own beer identity. For this guide we use Fuji indigo, snowcap white and grain gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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