Hyatt Regency Tokyo’s Bar Eau de Vie (オードヴィー) will host Sandy Hyslop, Chivas Brothers’ Master Blender Emeritus, for a masterclass on October 2, 2026, opening a three-month promotion built around Royal Salute (ローヤルサルート), the company’s flagship luxury Scotch. It is a rare chance to hear directly from a blender who has shaped Ballantine’s, Chivas Regal and Royal Salute for more than four decades, in a city better known abroad for its own whisky than for hosting Scotch events.
A blender with four decades behind the bottles
Hyslop began his whisky career in 1983 at Stewart & Son of Dundee and was named Chivas Brothers’ Master Blender Emeritus earlier in 2026, after 42 years shaping the company’s Scotch portfolio. His 4 p.m.–6 p.m. masterclass at Eau de Vie is priced at 9,800 yen (about $65) and capped at 20 seats. The tasting lineup runs from the Royal Salute 21 Year Signature Blend through two limited designer collaborations, the Harris Reed Gold and Richard Quinn Daisy editions, to the 26 Year Colheita Port Cask Finish.
A cocktail session and a return-visit incentive
The same evening, from 7 p.m., brand ambassador Daiki Nakamura and Eau de Vie’s chief bartender, Genki Ozeki, pair four original Royal Salute cocktails with tapas in a session called “Royal Session” (12,500 yen for the full pairing, 3,500 yen a la carte, no reservation cap). About 40 attendees across both events will also receive a card good for a free pour of a limited Royal Salute expression, worth roughly 7,000 yen, on a later visit. The wider promotion, “Enter a New Kingdom by Royal Salute,” runs at the bar through December 31 with seven bottlings, four of them in restricted quantities that will not be replenished once sold. Bookings for both October 2 events go through TableCheck.
Why it matters beyond Tokyo
Royal Salute is already sold across the US, UK and EU, so most of the core range in the masterclass is not hard to find at home. What is harder to find is Hyslop himself: Chivas Brothers sends its master blender to a limited number of cities each year, and Tokyo’s inclusion says as much about the brand’s confidence in the Japanese luxury-spirits market as about the city’s own bar scene. The Harris Reed and Richard Quinn designer editions, both released in small runs, are also the kind of bottling Chivas Brothers has used to gauge collector demand in Asia ahead of wider release. For anyone routing a Tokyo trip around bars rather than distilleries, Eau de Vie has operated since the hotel opened in 1980, seats 79, and is open nightly from 5 p.m. without the reservation-only policy common at Tokyo’s more exclusive whisky bars.
Source: PR TIMES (Japanese)