Miyagikyo’s story
The Miyagikyo distillery is located close to the city of Sendai. In fact, it was originally named Sendai. The modern city has largely been rebuilt, following its destruction during the World War II. Miyagikyo is owned by Nikka, a famous name in Japanese whisky that is now a sub division of the Asahi Brewery Company. They also own the Yoichi distillery on the northern island of Hokkaido. The distillery is larger than Yoichi and has a current capacity of three million litres per year, but their whisky is less well known.
Much of the whisky produced at Miyagikyo, both the single malt and single grain, goes towards Nikka’s popular range of blended whiskies with just a small percentage released as a single malt. The single malt has somewhat of a cult following and Miyagikyo’s reputation is growing and they have recently added some significant awards to their trophy cabinet.
Miyagikyo’s history
Miyagikyo was founded in 1969 by a company called Nikka. They needed to build a new distillery in order to help their older Yoichi distillery. The idea was for Miyagikyo to produce whisky for Nikka’s range of blended whisky, while Yoichi would concentrate on single malt bottlings and marketing.
The legendary Masataka Taketsuru, who had aided Shinjiro Tori start Japan’s first distillery at Yamazaki before setting up Yoichi 10 years later, took three years to find the correct location for the distillery. Taketsuru was the founder of Nikka, Japan’s second ever whisky company after Suntory. His final location was in a wide forest valley at the junction of the Hirosegawa and Nikkawagawa rivers. Taketsuru chose this spot after tasting the quality of the water from the Nikkawagawa river and observing the localised humidity that was created by a combination of the two rivers joining and the surrounding hills. He felt that it was perfect conditions for the maturation of whisky.
Production started on a small scale in 1969 and the distillery was named Sendai due to its proximity to the nearby city. The distillery was expanded in 1979 to accommodate the production of grain whisky, and again in 1989 to bring it up to the current capacity for single malt. Two Coffey column stills were also installed in 1999 and they produce single grain, which is released as Coffey Grain, and distilled malted barley (Coffey Malt). The Asahi Brewery Company took control of Nikka in 2001 and they renamed the distillery as Miyagikyo.
- How to pronounce Miyagikyo? mee-yag-e-kyo
- Country: Japan
- Region: Sendai
- Founded: 1969
- Current owners: Nikka
- Production capacity per year: 3 million litres
- Washbacks: 22
- Stills: 8 pot, 2 column
- Visitor centre: Yes
Miyagikyo Distillery
1 Nikka
Aoba-ku
Sendai-shi
Miyagi
989-3433
Tel +81 (0) 22 395 2111 or (0) 22 395 2865
www.nikka.com/miyagikyo
Did you know?
Miyagikyo has a staggering 24 warehouses for maturing whisky. Part of the reason is because they employ the unusual practice of only stacking maturing casks two high in order to maximize the local humidity.