Yamazakura (山桜) is the whisky brand of Sasanokawa Shuzo (笹の川酒造), a sake house in Koriyama (郡山), Fukushima, that has held a whisky license since 1946. The short answer to what is in the bottle: only the Yamazakura single malts and a handful of limited releases are made entirely from Japanese-distilled whisky. The everyday blends, including the widely exported black label, are built from imported whisky combined with spirit from the company’s own Asaka distillery, and Sasanokawa says so on its own product pages.
This guide reads the Japanese-language record the company publishes about itself, and explains what it means for anyone choosing between Yamazakura labels on a shelf.
Who Sasanokawa Shuzo is
Sasanokawa is a brewery first. In a 2024 interview with the business publication Shikisai, tenth-generation head Yamaguchi Tetsuzo (山口哲蔵) said the family obtained a brewing license in 1710 and began making sake at the current branch in 1765. Sake remains the core of the business. Whisky, shochu, liqueurs and industrial alcohol arrived later, each one a response to a specific problem.
Yamaguchi credits his grandfather with that habit. During the Second World War, rice shortages made sake nearly impossible to brew. According to Yamaguchi, Sasanokawa was the first brewer in Tohoku (東北) to take up synthetic sake, a rice-free product developed by the research institute RIKEN (理化学研究所). That required an alcohol license, and during the war the brewery supplied alcohol at the military’s request.
Peace did not end the rice shortage. With large numbers of American occupation troops stationed in Japan, the brewery applied for a whisky license in 1946, and by Yamaguchi’s account the aim was simple: give the soldiers whisky to drink. The license was granted to the company under its name at the time, Yamazakura Shuzo (山桜酒造).
Yamaguchi sums up the attitude this way, in our translation: “Rather than sitting still, we are always looking for something to do. That is the Sasanokawa style.” That line explains why the whisky range can look scattered to a first-time buyer.
From Cherry Whisky to a long sleep
The license found its market in the regional whisky boom of the high-growth decades. Sasanokawa’s official history says that in the 1980s, three regional producers were grouped in a phrase: “Kita no Cherry, Higashi no Toa, Nishi no Mars,” or “Cherry in the north, Toa in the east, Mars in the west.” Cherry Whisky was Sasanokawa’s brand. Toa Shuzo (東亜酒造) owned Hanyu (羽生). Mars belonged to Hombo Shuzo (本坊酒造), whose story we cover in our Mars Shinshu distillery guide.
Then tastes changed, and in the company’s words the casks filled during the good years ended up sleeping at the back of the warehouse. Cherry Whisky is still sold in a 1.8-liter bottle at 37% ABV, which tells you who it was always for: domestic drinkers buying on price.
The Hanyu casks and why Sasanokawa took them
Every competitor in that 1980s phrase struggled. In 2003, Toa closed. Sasanokawa’s official history says that “after many twists and turns,” the whisky casks from Toa’s Hanyu distillery were taken into storage at Sasanokawa. The company adds a line of genuine surprise: nobody could have predicted those casks would lead to Venture Whisky and the cult following of Ichiro’s Malt.
Why this mattered is covered in our history of Hanyu and the Card Series: maturing whisky must sit in a licensed facility, and Ichiro Akuto (肥土伊知郎), grandson of Toa’s founder, had casks but no licensed warehouse. Sasanokawa, a former rival, had both. Akuto later built Chichibu (秩父), which our Chichibu distillery guide covers in depth.
What the company says it learned
We have found no official statement that Hanyu whisky went into any Yamazakura bottle, so treat retailer copy implying it with caution. What the company draws from the episode is a lesson about time. Its official history says, in our translation: “One thing is certain: whisky cannot be made overnight, and the feelings of makers who cherished even a single drop of spirit did not disappear.”
In 2014, Sasanokawa bottled its own long-sleeping casks under a revived name, YAMAZAKURA, describing the stock as having “given the angels a generous share.” The first Yamazakura releases were not new projects. They came from casks a less patient company might have dumped during the slump.
How the Yamazakura range grew
Sasanokawa’s official archive lists every release since the relaunch, and read in order it shows a company working out what to do with old stock before it had new spirit of its own.
The old-stock years, 2014 to 2016
The 2015 Yamazakura Pure Malt Aged 15 Years is the most revealing entry. According to the archive, it used only whisky more than 20 years old, but the label says 15 because the spirit spent 15 years in wood, then time in a tank, before a final spell back in casks. That is an unusually honest reading of age: the company counted only years in wood, not years since distillation. Our explainer on Japanese whisky age statements covers why that distinction matters.
The same year brought a 100-bottle Rare Old release for the brewery’s 250th anniversary, bottled at 56% in a hand-blown bottle. These were the output of a warehouse, not a distillery, and the company never pretended otherwise.
Asaka comes online, 2016 to 2022
In the winter of 2016, a traditional clay-walled storehouse relocated from the company’s founding site was fitted with pot stills and a mash tun and began operating as Asaka distillery (安積蒸溜所). Our Asaka distillery guide covers the build and the Asaka plain in detail. From here, the archive splits into two tracks.
The first track is Asaka’s own spirit. In December 2019 came Yamazakura Single Malt Asaka The First, 1,500 bottles at 50%, built around three-year-old non-peated spirit from first-fill bourbon barrels. A peated version followed in December 2020: 2,000 bottles at 50%, using malt the company specifies at 50 ppm phenols, and awarded gold at the Tokyo Whisky and Spirits Competition (TWSC) in 2021.
The second track is a run of pure malt cask finishes, from wine and port to rum, Cognac and mizunara, mostly released between 2018 and 2020. The archive describes most as the company’s own stored bourbon-cask stock, but does not say where it was distilled.
The zodiac series
In early 2021, five years after distilling restarted, Sasanokawa released its first single cask from 2016 spirit, labeled for the Year of the Ox. The plan was an annual zodiac bottling. The company’s stated intent, in our translation: “Just as the distillery’s casks mature one more year at a time, we hope each year’s zodiac release will be better than the last.” It is a small statement, but it is a clear public commitment to judge the distillery by its progress, not its first release.
Which Yamazakura bottles are Japanese whisky
This is the question most English-language pages skip, and the one that matters most for a buyer. Japan’s industry labelling standard, explained in our guide to what counts as Japanese whisky, reserves the term for whisky fermented, distilled and matured in Japan. A blend that includes imported whisky can still be sold legally in Japan, but it should not call itself Japanese whisky.
Sasanokawa’s product pages make the answer unusually easy to find. Every bottle in the current regular range carries the same note in Japanese: this product is made with imported whisky and whisky from Asaka distillery. The table below summarizes the current range as the company lists it.
| Bottle | Style on the company’s page | ABV | Contents, per Sasanokawa |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yamazakura Fine Blended Whisky black label | Blended whisky | 40% | Imported whisky plus Asaka spirit |
| Yamazakura Precious | Blended whisky | 46% | Imported whisky plus Asaka spirit, 3,000 bottles a month since August 2022 |
| Yamazakura Asaka & 4 | World blended whisky | 47% | Asaka key malt plus whisky from the world’s five major producing regions |
| Yamazakura Pure Malt | Pure malt whisky | 48% | Imported whisky plus Asaka spirit |
| Yamazakura Smoky Edition | Blended whisky | 46% | Imported whisky plus Asaka spirit, sold only through the Aeon chain in Japan |
| Yamazakura Single Malt Asaka releases | Single malt | 50% and up | Asaka distillery only |
How to read a Yamazakura label
Two naming habits help. First, the words “Japanese whisky” appear on the releases that qualify: Yamazakura Japanese Single Malt Asaka, the Japanese Single Cask zodiac bottlings, and the 2021 Blended Malt Japanese Whisky Asaka Sherry Wood Reserve, which the company says combined domestic stock from its own warehouse with Asaka spirit. Second, Asaka & 4 is openly labeled a world blend, the category we explain in why some bottles say World Blended Whisky.
If a Yamazakura bottle says only “blended whisky” or “pure malt,” assume it contains imported whisky. That is not a flaw in itself, and Sasanokawa discloses it more plainly than many producers. But a buyer who wants Japanese-distilled whisky should look for “Asaka” plus “single malt” or “Japanese whisky” on the front label.
The wind philosophy and what it means in practice
Sasanokawa calls itself the “brewery of the wind” and Asaka the “distillery of the wind” (風の蒸溜所). This is more than a slogan. Koriyama sits on the Asaka plain, where a cold winter wind called Bandai-oroshi (磐梯颪) blows down from Mount Bandai. The distillery’s official story describes casks in a dim warehouse “shrinking from the swing between heat and cold” while they wait to be released, and argues that the wind’s character is the distillery’s character.
In the Shikisai interview, Yamaguchi gave three meanings for the word. There is the literal wind of a very windy city. There is ventilation, the idea of openness. And there is fudo (風土), a word that joins wind and earth to mean local climate and culture. He added that after more than 250 years in Koriyama, the brewery had learned that “gentle, mellow drinks are born from getting through harsh seasons and hard times,” and that he wants the company to be “like bamboo grass that bends but does not break in any wind.” The company name contains that image: sasa (笹) means bamboo grass.
Land, cherry trees and a long horizon
The official story also ties the family to the Kaiseisha (開成社), the group of 25 Koriyama merchants who began reclaiming the Asaka plain in 1873. The company says one founding member was the current head’s great-grandfather. It also says the Kaiseisha planted cherry trees on a reservoir embankment in 1878 with the words “we may never see it, but it is for our descendants,” and that those trees have been identified as the oldest surviving Somei Yoshino cherries in Japan. We present that last claim as the company’s, not as our own finding.
Sasanokawa’s text says the founders’ dream “continues today in whisky-making for the future,” and closes with a line aimed at the export boom: “When the boom settles, what will be tested is our passion for whisky-making and our love for the land where it is born and raised.” The company says it wants to face whisky “as sincerely as the toji puts care into sake,” looking “ten or twenty years” ahead.
What this means for a drinker
Put together, the record describes a company whose instinct is to keep things rather than discard them: its own neglected casks, a rival’s orphaned stock, an old company name, and a license that sat mostly unused for decades. For a drinker, that has a concrete consequence. The most characterful Yamazakura bottles tend to be the limited ones that either draw on long-held stock or show Asaka’s own young spirit, while the regular blends are value products built for highballs, which our Japanese highball guide covers. Choosing between them is mostly a question of whether you want history in the glass or an everyday mixer.
Where to buy Yamazakura
Availability varies by market, and the regular blends travel far more widely than the single malts.
- United States: Yamazakura Blended Whisky appears at a number of US online liquor retailers. Asaka single malts are rare and usually limited to specialist stores. Our guide to buying Japanese whisky in the US explains how state shipping rules affect what you can order.
- United Kingdom: Master of Malt lists Yamazakura Blended Whisky, and Hard To Find Whisky carries a Yamazakura brand page for rarer bottlings. See our UK buying guide for other retailers.
- European Union: Several EU online retailers list the blend. Single malts are best tracked through specialist shops.
- Japan: The widest selection is at the brewery shop in Koriyama and the company’s domestic online store.
Check the front label against the table above before paying a single malt price.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Is Yamazakura Japanese whisky?
A: Only some of it. Sasanokawa Shuzo’s own product pages state that the regular Yamazakura blends, pure malt and Asaka & 4 are made with imported whisky plus spirit from its Asaka distillery. The Yamazakura single malts labeled Asaka, and releases marked “Japanese whisky,” are the bottles made from Japanese-distilled spirit.
Q: What is the connection between Sasanokawa Shuzo and Ichiro’s Malt?
A: When Toa Shuzo closed in 2003, the whisky casks from its Hanyu distillery were moved into storage at Sasanokawa, which held a valid whisky license. Ichiro Akuto used that stock for the early Ichiro’s Malt releases before building Chichibu. We have found no official statement that Hanyu whisky went into Yamazakura.
Q: Why is the brand called Yamazakura?
A: Yamazakura, meaning mountain cherry, was the company’s own name when it received its whisky license in 1946. The business later reorganized as Sasanokawa Shuzo, and when it bottled its long-stored casks in 2014 it revived the older name for the whisky, linking the modern brand directly to the original license.
Q: Is Yamazakura Asaka The First still available?
A: The original Asaka The First was a limited run of 1,500 bottles released in December 2019, and the peated version was limited to 2,000 bottles in December 2020. Both are listed in the company archive as past releases, so remaining bottles now circulate mainly through specialist retailers and the secondary market rather than regular distribution.
Sources
- Sasanokawa Shuzo, “Story: Asaka distillery, the distillery of the wind” (Japanese) — https://www.sasanokawa.co.jp/asaka-distillery/contents/story.html
- Sasanokawa Shuzo, “Current products” (Japanese) — https://www.sasanokawa.co.jp/asaka-distillery/contents/productsDetail/currentProducts.html
- Sasanokawa Shuzo, “Whisky archive” (Japanese) — https://www.sasanokawa.co.jp/asaka-distillery/contents/productsDetail/whiskyArchive.html
- Shikisai, interview with Yamaguchi Tetsuzo, October 17, 2024 (Japanese) — https://chiiki-shikisai.com/sasanokawa/
- Kimura Shurui Hanbai, “Sasanokawa Shuzo: whisky edition, Vol. 53” (Japanese) — https://www.kimura-sake.com/single-post/笹の川酒造-ウイスキー編-vol-53