Japan Whisky Press

Nozawa Onsen distillery: whisky in a Nagano ski village

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Nozawa Onsen (野沢温泉) distillery is a gin and whisky distillery in the hot-spring and ski village of Nozawa Onsen in northern Nagano Prefecture. It opened on December 15, 2022, in a converted vegetable cannery a minute’s walk from the village’s Oyu (大湯) bathhouse, and it was founded by a mix of foreign residents and villagers. Its first single malt, Barrel Hall Series, goes on sale in Japan on November 6, 2026, at 47% ABV and ¥13,200 for 700ml.

Most English coverage stops at “gin distillery in a ski town.” This guide draws on the distillery’s own Japanese-language columns, its press releases and a Japanese Forbes interview with its founder. It answers two questions those pages skip: what the team is doing differently in the mash tun, and why a ski village festival sits at the center of the whisky’s identity.

Why a ski trip turned into a distillery

The founder named in the distillery’s press releases is Philip Richards, an Australian who spent more than 20 years in finance in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. He told Forbes Japan that it began as “just a ski trip.” From around 2000, while still a banker, he toured Japanese ski resorts and kept returning to Nozawa Onsen. His reasons were less about snow than about scale: the resort is good, but the village itself is alive, with hot springs, restaurants and inns all within walking distance, and people who are close and warm.

He bought a house, then went further than most foreign second-home owners. The distillery’s own column says he was the first foreigner invited into a village age-group association and to take part in the Dosojin (道祖神) Fire Festival, the event that organizes much of village life. In the Forbes interview he describes six months of preparation each year with his age-mates, building the festival shrine in the snow and keeping watch over the fire. That, he says, is what made the village see him as more than a newcomer.

A team from several countries

The company, Nozawa Onsen Distillery KK, was registered in March 2021. Its corporate profile lists David Elsworth as representative, and its brand director is Ryotaro Yao (八尾良太郎), a villager who previously worked at Coca-Cola Japan. Head distiller Isamu “Sam” Yoneda grew up in Britain, came to Japan in 2013 to teach English in Ibaraki, and joined Kiuchi Shuzo, the maker of Hitachino Nest beer. Starting by washing beer kegs, he went on to help launch three distilleries there. Forbes reports that he became a company director in 2025. If you know Kiuchi’s whisky, see our report on its new Isonohama distillery in Oarai.

Sam told the distillery’s column that when he first visited with his family, the sound of running water everywhere in the village won him over, along with mountain scenery that reminded him of Scotland. He also liked the team itself, with members from Japan, Britain, Italy and Germany.

The water, and why it matters most after distillation

Every account of the distillery comes back to water. The village sits below beech forest that, according to the distillery, reaches up to about 1,650 meters. Heavy winter snow soaks slowly through the forest soil, and the distillery says it takes about 50 years to emerge as the springs that run through the village. Richards calls it a soft water that is “very mellow and suited to spirits,” and says the gin could not taste the way it does without it.

Sam goes further and calls it ultra-soft. He makes a specific point about where it counts. Water matters at mashing and fermentation, but he stresses the stage where distilled spirit is cut with water to bottling strength. With water this soft, he says, nothing interferes with the spirit’s aroma, and the silky texture in the mouth is the distillery’s signature. The distillery has not published a hardness figure, so treat “ultra-soft” as its own description.

A village built around water

The water is not only a production input. Nozawa Onsen has 13 free public bathhouses, and villagers still wash vegetables and cook at the Ogama (麻釜) hot spring. Kenji Kono (河野健児), a former ski cross World Cup athlete and past head of the village tourism association, told the distillery that around 2020 the village decided to promote itself as “a village that runs on water,” not only skiing and hot springs. The distillery, he said, arrived at exactly the right time to give that idea substance. The beech forest also explains the logo, which depicts the water cycle, and the shape of the whisky bottle, covered below.

How Nozawa Onsen makes its whisky

A hammer mill and a mash filter

This is where the distillery departs from Japanese norms. Most Japanese malt distilleries grind malt in a roller mill and drain the wort through a lauter or mash tun. Nozawa Onsen installed a US-made hammer mill, which grinds malt much finer than usual for single malt, and, according to Forbes Japan, a mash filter that it describes as the first installed in Japan. Fine flour would clog a conventional mash tun, so the filter is what makes the hammer mill workable.

Forbes notes a second consequence: the setup allows grains other than barley. The founders have talked about corn, rye, and even buckwheat, wheat and rice from the village itself. None of that has been released, but it shows where the equipment could take them.

Whole mash, or “on-grain”

The second method runs the other way. In the distillery’s column, Sam describes distilling “on-grain,” keeping grain particles in the wash rather than separating out clear wort, which is the usual Japanese practice. The press release calls it whole mash with no filtering. Sam says the resulting spirit showed a pronounced body and a strong, rich malt character. He credits craft beer for the willingness to try it: brewers routinely experiment with ingredients to get the most out of them, and he applies the same thinking to whisky.

The first single malt blends spirit from both methods. The distillery says layering the finely milled, filtered spirit with the whole-mash spirit is what gives the whisky its depth.

Australian barley, local gin botanicals

The barley for the first release is malted in Australia, Richards’ home country, which the distillery says openly. That is legal under the Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association standard, which regulates where whisky is mashed, distilled, matured and bottled, not where grain is grown. Our guide to what counts as Japanese whisky explains the rule. The gin, by contrast, uses a rice spirit base and village botanicals such as Japanese cedar, kuromoji (クロモジ) spicebush and ground ivy, chosen by walking the forest with local staff.

The Dosojin festival and the 17-year cask

The Dosojin Fire Festival is held every January and is designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan. Men in their unlucky years select beech trees and build a shrine more than 10 meters tall without a single nail. On the night, villagers charge it with burning torches while men aged 25 and 42, by the traditional count, defend it, before it is set alight. Each age group has a fixed role, and knowledge passes from one generation to the next.

The distillery built its whisky around that idea. The tagline is “Whisky Connects Generations,” and the glass bottle carries the bark of a beech, the festival’s sacred tree, taken from a 3D scan of a real trunk. Beech from the burned shrine also goes into a seasonal Doso Gin, and the distillery says part of its sales go back to running the festival.

A barrel that waits for its owners

The most striking project is not for sale. The day after the festival, the 25-year-olds who have just served in it come to the distillery and fill a 200-liter cask together. It stays closed for 17 years, until the same group reaches 42, the next major unlucky year, and returns to open it. Yao put it simply in the distillery’s column: whisky may be something that can store time. Kono said villagers notice this kind of work, which tourists never see.

The same thinking shaped the launch. Before any public sale, the distillery held a “Village Release” on September 26, 2026, and gave every household a 50ml bottle. We covered it in our report on the completion of the first single malt.

The first single malt: Barrel Hall Series

The table below sets the two spirit streams in the first release against the usual Japanese malt process, based on what the distillery has published.

Step Usual Japanese malt practice Nozawa Onsen stream 1 Nozawa Onsen stream 2
Milling Roller mill, coarse grist US-made hammer mill, fine grind Not specified
Separating the wort Mash or lauter tun, clear wort Mash filter None: whole mash, grain left in
What the team says it adds Clean, light spirit Not described separately Body and rich malt character
Barley Often imported, origin rarely stated Australian malt Australian malt

Barrel Hall Series is a three-year-old single malt at 47% ABV in a 700ml bottle, priced at ¥13,200 including tax. The distillery has not stated the cask types or the number of bottles. Its own tasting notes list honey and crème brûlée on the nose, then toffee, fruitcake and chocolate. Those are the producer’s words; we have not tasted it. Details are in our Barrel Hall Series release report. For Nagano’s other distilleries, see our Komoro distillery guide and our Mars Shinshu distillery guide.

Price context matters. ¥13,200 is high for a three-year-old, but in line with first releases from Japan’s newer craft distilleries, where small volumes and collector demand push prices up. If you are weighing a debut bottle against established brands, our explainer on why Japanese whisky is so expensive sets out the economics.

Where to buy and how to visit

As of October 2026, the whisky is a Japan release. Here is the picture by market.

  • US: The distillery says its spirits are now sold in New York and elsewhere in North America, but that refers to the gin. No US release of the whisky has been announced. Our guide on where to buy Japanese whisky in the US covers the main retailers to watch.
  • UK: We found no UK retailer listing Nozawa Onsen whisky. Check our UK buying guide for specialists that pick up Japanese craft releases.
  • EU: No regular EU distribution has been announced. The distillery’s Obuse Gin was shown in Nantes, France, but that is not a whisky listing.
  • Japan: The distillery shop, its official online store and other stockists, according to the release announcement. If you plan to bring bottles home, read our guide to importing Japanese whisky first.

Visiting the distillery

The distillery runs a tasting bar and gift shop in the old cannery, with the stills in view. Its booking page offers a 45-minute gin tasting of four core gins for ¥1,000 per person, with food and cocktails available. Every member of a group needs a booking, even if only one person is tasting. The village is small enough to walk, so it is easy to fit in between the slopes and the bathhouses. Skiing has been part of village life for more than 100 seasons, and Kono notes that lift visits peaked at 1.1 million in 1993 against about 470,000 now. The village is pushing to draw visitors in spring, summer and autumn too. To place it on a wider trip, use our list of Japanese whisky distilleries.

Why this distillery is worth watching

Plenty of new Japanese distilleries have good water and a view. Nozawa Onsen stands out for two reasons. On the production side, it pairs a hammer mill and mash filter with whole-mash distillation, two approaches that most Japanese malt distilleries do not use. That could produce a heavier, more textured single malt than the clean house style many newcomers aim for. On the community side, it has tied itself to the village’s central festival, with a 17-year cask and a launch held for residents first, rather than borrowing the village name for marketing.

The limits are clear too. The first release is three years old, made from imported barley, with no published cask details or bottle count, and no export date. Buy it for what it is: an early look at an unusual method. Judge the distillery on what follows. Read the label, check the cask information when it appears, and compare it with other young distilleries before paying secondary-market prices.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Who founded Nozawa Onsen distillery?

A: The distillery’s press releases name Philip Richards, an Australian former banker who skied in the village from around 2000 and later settled there, as its representative. The company profile lists David Elsworth as representative, and the team includes brand director Ryotaro Yao and head distiller Isamu “Sam” Yoneda, formerly of Kiuchi Shuzo.

Q: When is the first Nozawa Onsen single malt released?

A: Barrel Hall Series goes on sale in Japan on November 6, 2026. It is a three-year-old single malt at 47% ABV in a 700ml bottle, priced at ¥13,200. Village residents received 50ml bottles at a private “Village Release” on September 26, before the general launch.

Q: Is Nozawa Onsen whisky Japanese whisky if the barley is Australian?

A: Yes, it can be. The Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association standard sets rules on where whisky is mashed, distilled, matured and bottled, not where the grain is grown. Imported malt is common in Japan, and Nozawa Onsen is unusual mainly in stating the origin openly.

Q: Can you visit Nozawa Onsen distillery?

A: Yes. The distillery has a tasting bar and gift shop near the Oyu bathhouse in the village center. Its booking page offers a 45-minute tasting of four gins for ¥1,000 per person, and asks that every member of a group books. Visitors must be of legal drinking age, which is 20 in Japan.

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