Tenkyo (天鏡), an Aizu (会津) drinks company that runs a whisky distillery alongside a sake brewery founded in 1869, will release KAZE 921 First Edition 2026 on September 21, 2026. The bottling is limited to 921 bottles. It is a blended whisky made from Scottish new-make spirit that Tenkyo imported and then matured and blended at its site in Bandai (磐梯), Fukushima Prefecture.
KAZE (風, “wind”) is the name Tenkyo gives to whisky that starts life in Scotland. The company says its founder, Shunsuke Koike (小池駿介), bought unaged spirit from three Scottish distilleries and laid it down in Aizu across 189 casks of 58 types, then combined small volumes from each into a solera — a blend that is topped up over time rather than emptied. KAZE 921 is drawn from that solera and released each year on Koike’s birthday, September 21. Tenkyo’s history page refers to an accident two years before the distillery began operating in 2024, and a scholarship foundation now carries Koike’s name.
This year’s edition is built around two well-aged Pedro Ximenez sherry casks vatted with the Aizu solera. It is bottled at 61.7% ABV without coloring or chill filtration, at 700ml, and priced at 27,500 yen including tax (about $185 / £140). The label uses Dekigahara washi (出ヶ原和紙), a local handmade paper woven with Aizu-grown barley straw and finished by letterpress. Sales run through Tenkyo’s online shop and its on-site store, both in Japan.
A sake house that went to Scotland
Tenkyo Co., Ltd. was formed in 2018 to join Eisen (榮川), the 1869 sake brewery, with a new whisky venture. Koike met Scotch while studying in Britain and toured more than 60 Scottish distilleries in 2019 before building the distillery with the Speyside engineering firm Forsyths. Tenkyo’s distillery started running in 2024 and has four pot stills and ten washbacks, five of them wooden; its chief blender, Keiichi Narita (成田惠一), is a former sake brewmaster. Its single malt, sold under the Tenkyo name, is distilled on site and is a separate product from KAZE.
Why it matters outside Japan
KAZE 921 is not “Japanese whisky” under the 2021 industry standard, which requires mashing, fermentation, distillation and at least three years of maturation in Japan. Its stated origin is UK-made malt and grain whisky, and it is labeled blended whisky — the same category as the “world blend” bottlings several Japanese firms now sell. What stands out is the solera format, more associated with Glenfiddich than with a Japanese craft producer, and the choice to age Scottish spirit through the cold, snow-heavy winters of the Aizu basin.
There is little here for buyers abroad: 921 bottles, a domestic release and no export announced. Tenkyo adds to a small Fukushima whisky scene that also includes Asaka (安積) and the newer Tamano Ascend. Its setting — Mount Bandai, Lake Inawashiro and the hot-spring towns around them — is about two hours from Tokyo, which for now is the realistic way to see the distillery or find a bottle. Whether the on-site Tenkyo single malt reaches the United States or Europe will say more about the project’s global reach.
Source: Tenkyo via PR TIMES (Japanese).