Kirin Fuji Gotemba Distillery

At the foot of Mount Fuji, where snowmelt takes fifty years to filter through volcanic rock before it ever reaches a mash tun, Kirin Fuji Gotemba Distillery does something almost no other whiskey producer in the world attempts: it makes both malt and grain whiskey, start to finish, on a single site. Mashing, fermentation, distillation, maturation, blending, and bottling all happen at one elevated compound roughly 620 meters up the mountain's slope, in a climate the distillery credits directly for how its spirit ages.

History & Heritage

Fuji Gotemba was founded in 1972 as Kirin-Seagram Ltd., a three-way joint venture between Kirin Brewery Company of Japan, J.E. Seagram and Sons of the United States, and Chivas Brothers of the United Kingdom. That international parentage is not incidental. It shaped the distillery's entire approach to production, blending Scottish pot-still tradition with American and Canadian grain-whiskey methods from the outset. The first Japanese whiskey to carry the distillery's name, Robert Brown, was released in February 1974.

In 2002, after Seagram sold off its beverage assets worldwide, Kirin became the sole owner and renamed the operation Kirin Distillery Company. Kirin also acquired Four Roses Distillery in Kentucky that same year, a parallel move that gave the company a hand in both Japanese and American whiskey production. In 2007, Kirin Holdings Company, Limited was established as a pure holding company, and Fuji Gotemba has operated under that structure since. The distillery is owned, as of July 2026, by Kirin Holdings Company, Limited, with no indication of a change in that ownership structure.

The Whiskey

What sets Fuji Gotemba apart is production breadth. Malt whiskey is made in traditional Scottish copper pot stills. Grain whiskey, meanwhile, is produced in three distinct styles under one roof: a light, Scotch-style grain from a multi-column still, a medium, Canadian-style batch grain from a kettle and column still, and a heavy, Bourbon-style grain from a beer column and doubler. The mash bill draws on malted barley, corn, and rye, sourced both internationally from Scotland and Ireland and increasingly from grain grown domestically around Gotemba.

Fermentation runs through both stainless steel fermenters and wooden vats, using hundreds of proprietary pure-cultured yeast strains maintained for specific spirit profiles. Maturation relies primarily on Kentucky white oak, including first-fill ex-Bourbon barrels, refill casks, and virgin oak, with filling strengths calibrated differently depending on which of the three grain styles is aging inside. The distillery keeps its own bottling plant and cooperage on-site, one more link in a chain that rarely leaves the property.

The flagship modern range carries the Fuji name. Fuji Japanese Whiskey, launched in 2020, is a single-site blend built from whiskies aged an average of eight years in American white oak. Fuji Single Grain Japanese Whiskey blends three separate grain styles, made its U.S. debut in 2021, and its predecessor, the Small Batch Single Grain 25 Years Old, was named World's Best Grain Whisky at the 2016 World Whiskies Awards, a title the Single Grain expression repeated in 2020. Fuji Single Malt Japanese Whisky reached American shelves in 2025 as the distillery's first single malt release in that market. In 2025, all three core Fuji expressions, Single Grain, Single Blended, and Single Malt, won Gold in the Japanese Whisky category at the International Spirits Challenge, the third consecutive year the range had done so.

Why It Matters

Few distilleries anywhere handle full-spectrum malt and grain production on one site, and fewer still layer three separate grain-whiskey traditions, Scottish, Canadian, and Bourbon-style, into a single portfolio. That range, combined with Mount Fuji's mineral-filtered water and the cool, misty elevation that slows and evens out barrel aging, gives Fuji Gotemba's whiskey a technical foundation that is unusual even within Japan's whiskey industry. It is also one of the few Japanese producers whose current ownership, production method, and site have remained continuous and unambiguous since the joint-venture era, a detail that matters in a category where sourcing and ownership questions often complicate the story.

Visiting the Distillery

Fuji Gotemba runs guided tours Tuesday through Sunday, with the distillery shop open from 9:30 am to 4:00 pm. Tours generally start around 10:30 am, with the last tour near 2:10 pm, run 70 to 90 minutes, and cost 500 Yen. Tours are conducted primarily in Japanese, but English audio guides or translation devices are provided. Reservations are recommended roughly five weeks ahead, and a free shuttle runs from JR Gotemba Station's Hakone Otome exit, bus stop 4. The distillery's tour program was recognized as Japan's Leading Whisky Distillery Tour at the World Travel Awards in both 2024 and 2025.

The Sentinel Room's Reserve Whiskey Library currently carries 4 expressions from Kirin Fuji Gotemba Distillery, including Fuji Japanese Whiskey and Fuji Single Grain Japanese Whiskey.