Jul 20 (South China Morning Post) - The famed Yamazaki distillery marks its 100th anniversary this year with plenty to celebrate, as Japan’s acclaimed aged whiskies command increasingly eye-watering prices thanks to growing demand and longstanding shortages.
Japan’s oldest distillery has sat at the foot of a mountain outside Kyoto since it was built by Shinjiro Torii, the founder of Yamazaki maker Suntory, who wanted to make whisky suited to a Japanese palate.
It is largely foreign demand, along with the relative scarcity of the most desirable decades-old bottles, that has pushed prices sky-high.
A bottle of Yamazaki 55, with an official retail price of three million yen (S$28,415), sold for a whopping US$600,000 at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last year. That was still well below the record US$795,000 set at a Hong Kong auction in 2020.
Today’s success belies a 20-year downturn after domestic consumption peaked in 1983.
