Nikka is whisky brand name which Asahi Beer, the no1 beer company in Japan, owns. Nikka was founded by Mr. Taketsuru who is loved by all Japanese whisky fans as “a father of Japanese whisky”. After his 2 years trip in Scotland, he got eager to make his own whisky in Japan. But at that time, Whisky was not well known in Japan so he had difficulty to raise the capital to start the whisky business. The only man who invested his dream was Mr.Torii, the founder of Suntory. So Mr. Taketsuru started his whisky life as a Suntory staff at first. Actually, Mr. Taketsuru was the person who founded the place of Yamazaki distillery as well. But after he spent 11 years in Suntory, he decided to leave Suntory and built a Yoichi distillery in Hokkaido. This is because Mr Taketsuru wanted to make more peaty whisky like Scotch whisky, but Suntory did not accept it because Suntory was sure the peaty whisky was not accepted by Japanese people at that time.
NIKKA has now 2 single malt whisky brand ; YOICHI whisky from YOICHI Distillery, and MIYAGIKYO whisky from MIYAGIKYO Distillery. And their flagship product ; PURE MALT WHISKY TAKETSURU which contains those 2 single malts.
impressive character of NIKKA. His name is “King of Blenders”. The model is Mr. William Phaup Lowrie.