Japan Whisky Press

Hida Takayama distillery: a sake brewer’s whisky school

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Hida Takayama (飛騨高山) distillery is a whisky distillery built inside a closed elementary school in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture, and it belongs to Funasaka Shuzoten (舩坂酒造店), a sake brewery that has worked in Takayama’s old merchant quarter for more than 200 years. It is Gifu’s first whisky distillery. Its pot stills stand on the stage of the old school gym, its casks sit in former classrooms, and its water comes from the slopes of Mount Norikura (乗鞍岳). As of October 2026 it has not yet released a single malt, though it says one is in development.

Almost nothing about this distillery exists in English. This guide draws on the company’s Japanese-language material, its 2022 crowdfunding statement and a 2026 interview in the Japanese magazine Serai. It answers two questions English pages skip: why a sake brewer chose a closed school, and what you can buy today, given that none of the current bottles count as Japanese whisky.

Why a 200-year-old sake brewery started making whisky

The story starts with a turnaround, not a passion for malt. Hiroki Arisu (有巣弘城), president of Funasaka Shuzoten, grew up in Takayama but worked in Tokyo as a corporate restructuring consultant. In 2010 his family took over the struggling brewery and he came home to run it. By his own account, he learned sake-making from scratch, pushed exports and tourism, and within about a decade the government had recognized the brewery as a regional growth company.

Then the pandemic hit. Arisu describes Takayama’s old town emptying “as if a fire had gone out,” with sake shipments stopping at the same time, and says he spent his days asking how to protect the region’s future.

The visit to Saburomaru

The answer came from a neighboring prefecture. Arisu visited Wakatsuru Shuzo in Toyama, where Takahiko Inagaki (稲垣貴彦) had revived the family’s Saburomaru (三郎丸) distillery. Arisu admits he knew whisky only as something he drank with older colleagues. What changed his mind was a remark of Inagaki’s: that tasting spirit his great-grandfather had distilled before he was born made him feel that one drink had connected a past era to his own. Arisu writes that he knew at that moment that this was what he should be doing.

That idea, a drink that links generations, runs through everything the distillery has said since. Arisu framed the project as whisky made “for our children and grandchildren,” and closed his campaign statement by promising to build a new school for the next 100 years. Inagaki, for his part, said he saw himself in Arisu: both had left Tokyo careers to rebuild a family drinks business from zero. You can read more about how Inagaki rebuilt his own distillery in our Saburomaru distillery guide.

A closed school in Takane, and why the site matters

The distillery occupies the former Takane Elementary School (旧高根小学校) in Takane-cho (高根町), a district of Takayama city on the border with Nagano Prefecture. Mount Norikura rises to the north and Mount Ontake (御嶽山) to the south, both above 3,000 meters. The school closed in 2007, when enrollment had fallen to 16 children. Arisu signed the lease with Takayama city on March 1, 2022.

He gives two kinds of reasons for choosing it. The practical ones are in the 2022 plan: high altitude, clean air, a dam next to the site that keeps the surroundings humid, reliable water, and plenty of space. Serai puts the site at 920 meters above sea level and reports that the water, drawn from beside the school building and filtered before use, tested at a hardness of 6, which makes it extremely soft. It is the same water the school used.

The school that nobody let go of

The second reason is the one Arisu talks about most. When he first visited, the school had been closed for about 15 years, yet local residents were still cleaning it regularly. The children’s posters were on the walls and their farewell messages were still on the blackboard. “I felt as if the children might still be there,” he told Serai. The last principal described a residents’ group that cut the grass on the school grounds every summer for ten years after it closed.

The distillery treats that history as part of the product. The blackboard messages from the school’s last day are preserved, and team leader Takuya Furuta (古田拓也), a Takayama native who has led distilling from the start, explains production to visitors in the old music room. Arisu’s argument is that a building the community kept alive for 15 years is the right place to make a spirit meant to be opened 10 or 20 years from now.

Takane is a depopulated district, and the distillery says plainly that it wants to bring people and jobs back. It already sends its spent grain to a local farm that raises Hida beef cattle, according to an October 2026 post on its site.

How Hida Takayama makes its spirit

A cast still from a bell foundry

The stills are ZEMON (ゼモン) pot stills made by Oigo Seisakusho (老子製作所), a Takaoka foundry known for temple bells. Instead of hammered copper sheet, the still is cast from a copper-tin alloy, a design Inagaki patented and first used at Saburomaru. Hida Takayama installed an improved model with a lantern-shaped neck and a downward-angled lyne arm. Serai calls it the ZEMON II and reports that only four exist in Japan.

The more important detail is what goes through it. Saburomaru distills only peated malt, so Hida Takayama was set up as the first distillery to run unpeated malt through a ZEMON. In 2022 Inagaki called it the first place to make non-peated spirit on the still. Peat has since appeared too: the distillery’s January 2026 Malty Smoky blend is described as the first use of its own peated spirit. Unpeated malt remains the core.

Two yeasts and a heavy target

Serai reports that the team is aiming for a sweet, heavy spirit. Since 2025 it has paired a dedicated whisky yeast with a beer ale yeast, and it added some brewing malt to the grist, which it says gives the mash a rich, butterscotch-like aroma. The two-yeast idea dates back to the 2022 crowdfunding, which offered new makes fermented both ways.

Fermentation is where the sake background shows. The plan called for four wooden washbacks, two in oak and two in larch (カラマツ). Serai reports that the distillery is still running two larch and two European oak vessels side by side to test how the wood affects fermentation. After alcoholic fermentation, the wash is left for about two more days of lactic fermentation. A brewery that has managed live yeast and bacteria in open wooden vessels for two centuries is used to treating fermentation as the stage that shapes flavor.

Casks in the staff room

According to Serai, the staff room now holds roughly 110 casks of 180 to 200 liters. Most are bourbon barrels, but the distillery has started using a small number of Japanese oak (mizunara) casks built by Hida furniture makers from local wood. Hida’s woodworking tradition, the Hida no Takumi (飛騨の匠), is how the distillery ties its casks to the place. To see how mizunara behaves in a cask, read our guide to mizunara oak whisky.

The all-Gifu whisky idea

The long-term goal has a name: “all-Gifu whisky” (オール岐阜ウイスキー), meaning Gifu-grown grain, Hida water and Hida-made casks. The distillery’s homepage presents it as something it can attempt there. In 2022 Arisu wrote that he hoped to use local barley grown by rice and vegetable farmers as a winter second crop, which would give them extra off-season income. Serai’s 2026 report says the distillery is gradually increasing its use of Gifu-grown wheat while it works on quality.

Treat this as a direction, not a finished product. No bottle labeled as all-Gifu whisky has been announced, and the distillery has not published what share of its grain is local. The 2022 plan also called for some spirit to mature at the Inami (井波) warehouse of T&T Toyama, the bottling business co-run by Inagaki, so future releases may come in more variations than a typical young distillery offers.

What you can buy now, and what it is

This is where English-language listings tend to get it wrong. The distillery has released blended whiskies, but none of them is a Hida Takayama single malt, and none qualifies as Japanese whisky under the Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association standard. The distillery says so directly on its product pages.

Bottle Released Contains Hida Takayama spirit? Category
Malty Salty 2024 Not stated; Serai describes it as made with overseas whisky Blended whisky
Sweet Sherry 2024 Not stated; Serai describes it as made with overseas whisky Blended whisky
Fruity Smooth January 2026 Yes, unpeated new-born World blended whisky
Malty Smoky January 2026 Yes, peated new-born World blended whisky

All four are 500ml bottles at 50% ABV, priced at ¥3,960 in Japan. The 2026 pair blends Scotch malt and grain whiskies aged at least five years with a portion of the distillery’s own young spirit, and each is planned at around 10,000 bottles. The distillery’s notes describe Fruity Smooth as showing pear and apple, and Malty Smoky as apple, malt and gentle smoke with a salty edge. Those are the producer’s descriptions, not ours.

The distillery is open about why these exist. It says the blends are made under the guidance of its blending adviser, Hideaki Kito (鬼頭英明), and are partly a way for its own team to build blending skill before the first single malt. Kito, a former chief blender at Kirin’s Fuji Gotemba distillery, was named technical adviser in 2022. If you want to understand why the label says “world blended,” see our explainer on world blended whisky in Japan and our guide to what counts as Japanese whisky.

The first single malt

Serai’s March 2026 issue reported that the first single malt, blended from about 110 casks, was planned for the end of 2026. On October 6, 2026, the distillery posted that it had met with Kito to compare several maturing spirits and to decide what the whisky should emphasize: elegance, depth or ease of drinking. It gave no release date or price. Until then, treat any “Hida Takayama single malt” listing with suspicion.

Where to buy and how to visit

Here is the picture for each market as of October 2026.

  • US: We found no importer listing any Hida Takayama whisky. The practical route is buying in Japan, or through a proxy service. Our guide to importing Japanese whisky covers the rules and costs.
  • UK: We found no UK retailer stocking the blends. The same options apply.
  • EU: We found no regular EU distribution.
  • Japan: The distillery runs an online shop, and Funasaka Shuzoten’s shop on Kami-sannomachi (上三之町) in Takayama’s old town is the easiest place to find the bottles in person. The distillery has also held limited-time tasting and sales events, announced on its news page.

Visiting the distillery

Tours are by reservation only, with dates posted on Instagram, Facebook and the distillery’s news page. They are for adults 20 and over, run in Japanese, and involve many stairs. The distillery’s September 2026 notice said public tours for 2026 end in late October. The site is about 40 minutes by car from central Takayama, so plan on a car or taxi. If you are building a broader trip, our list of Japanese whisky distilleries helps place it on a map with others in central Japan.

Why this distillery is worth watching

Many new Japanese distilleries have good water and a pretty view. Hida Takayama stands out because its founder came from rebuilding businesses and treats the distillery as the rebuilding of a community. The school, the cattle feed, the local woodworkers and the push toward Gifu grain all follow from that. On the production side, it shows what unpeated malt does on a cast copper-tin still, fermented the way a sake brewer would ferment it, in wooden vessels.

The limits are just as clear. There is no single malt yet, the current bottles are mostly Scotch, and the all-Gifu whisky is still a goal. Follow the first single malt, read its label closely, and compare it with other young distilleries such as Nagahama before paying secondary-market premiums.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Who owns Hida Takayama distillery?

A: It is owned and run by Funasaka Shuzoten, a sake brewery in Takayama’s old town with more than 200 years of history, and the maker of Miyamagiku (深山菊) sake. President Hiroki Arisu led the project, with Saburomaru’s Takahiko Inagaki as general adviser and Hideaki Kito advising on blending.

Q: Is there a Hida Takayama single malt yet?

A: Not as of October 2026. Serai reported in early 2026 that the first single malt was planned for the end of the year, and the distillery posted on October 6, 2026 that tasting meetings with its blending adviser were under way. No release date or price had been announced.

Q: Are the Fruity Smooth and Malty Smoky blends Japanese whisky?

A: No. The distillery states that they are world blended whiskies built on Scotch malt and grain aged at least five years, with a portion of its own young spirit. They do not meet the Japanese whisky standard, and the distillery asks buyers to keep that in mind.

Q: Why does the distillery use a ZEMON still?

A: ZEMON stills are cast from a copper-tin alloy by a Takaoka bell foundry, and they were invented by Takahiko Inagaki, whose Saburomaru distillery inspired the project. Saburomaru distills only peated malt, so Hida Takayama was set up to explore unpeated spirit on the same type of still.

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