Japan Whisky Press

Hoou Biden sake maker to open a Nikko whisky distillery

Wooden whisky casks stacked in a warehouse

Written by

KEYAKI

in

Update, October 25, 2026: Nikko distillery was completed on October 5, 2026, and production was scheduled to start on October 12. The first shipment is now targeted for 2030, a year later than the plan described when this story first ran. Our follow-up report, Nikko distillery is complete, with first whisky due in 2030, covers the finished site and the Tobu partnership. This article has been revised to match the latest reporting.

Kobayashi Shuzo (小林酒造), the Tochigi (栃木) sake brewery best known for its Hoou Biden (鳳凰美田) label, is building its whisky business in Nikko (日光), one of the most-visited towns in Japan. The company presents the project as a tourism venture as much as a production one, with a site a short walk from JR Nikko Station and a plan to draw overseas visitors and higher-spending travelers.

The site and the build

The distillery occupies the former grounds of Nikko’s municipal wholesale market in the Seo (瀬尾) district, on land that looks toward the Nikko mountain range. The Shimotsuke Shimbun (下野新聞) reported in January 2025 that the brewery and the city had signed a provisional contract for the land, with the aim of reaching the market in 2029. A groundbreaking ceremony followed on December 3, 2025. At that point Kobayashi Shuzo put the total investment at about 1.6 billion yen, or roughly $11 million, and planned to finish the building in early July 2026 and start production in October.

The completed facility is smaller and more specific than the early descriptions. According to Shimotsuke, the main building is a steel-frame structure, partly two stories high, with a total floor area of about 1,300 square meters. It holds two pot stills, of 5,500 liters and 3,500 liters, and a warehouse with space for about 1,000 casks. The paper also reported plans to add more maturation warehouses and a guesthouse on the grounds later, so that visitors can stay overnight. Kobayashi Shuzo joins a growing list of Japanese distilleries that have come online in the past few years.

Who is Kobayashi Shuzo

The brewery was founded in 1872 and is based in Oyama (小山), in the south of Tochigi Prefecture. Its flagship name, Hoou Biden, refers to the old village of Mita (美田), an area known for good rice and for groundwater fed by the Nikko mountains. The brewery describes the whole Hoou Biden range as ginjo-style sake, the polished-rice, aroma-led style that has made it one of the better-known labels among sake drinkers in Japan.

The move into whisky is not the brewery’s first experiment with wood. In 2020, a collaboration with the Hiroshima retailer Sake Shop Yamada (酒商山田) and the Niigata winery Fermier (フェルミエ) saw Kobayashi Shuzo age a junmai ginjo sake, fermented with wine yeast, in a French oak cask previously used for white wine. The project page quotes Masaki Kobayashi (小林正樹), then managing director and now president, explaining that the point was to judge the right moment to stop maturation, rather than to turn sake into wine. That is a small project, but it shows a team already thinking about cask influence and timing, which are central to whisky.

Why this matters

Kobayashi Shuzo is part of a wider shift in which established sake and shochu producers move into whisky. They bring fermentation skills, water rights, buildings and distribution, and they are drawn by export demand for Japanese whisky and by margins that domestic sake struggles to match. The team behind Yuza (遊佐) in Yamagata followed a similar path, and newer projects such as Tanzawa (丹沢) show how many small producers are now starting from scratch.

Tochigi itself is turning into a small whisky cluster. Nishibori Shuzo (西堀酒造), another Oyama sake brewery founded in 1872, set up the Nikko Kaido Oyama distillery (日光街道小山蒸溜所) in 2022. The company describes it as the first whisky distillery in the prefecture, citing the Japanese Whisky Yearbook 2023. Its TETSU (哲) brand won an Innovator of the Year award at the Tokyo Whisky & Spirits Competition in 2025, and in July 2026 it released a single grain whisky made from rice flour left over from polishing sake rice, fermented with sake yeast. Shimotsuke reports that Kobayashi Shuzo is the third company to enter the whisky business in Tochigi, and the paper has also covered a maturation-only facility in the Nikko area run by the Stork Valley distillery.

Timing is the other point of interest. Under Japan’s 2021 labeling standards, spirit must be mashed, fermented, distilled and matured in Japan for at least three years before it can be sold as Japanese whisky. A first shipment in 2030 fits distillation starting in October 2026. The one-year slip from the original 2029 target suggests the company is willing to wait rather than release the youngest legal spirit. Whether a new distillery can build an export name from a standing start is a separate question, and one that the category’s pricing and the aged-stock shortage make harder than it looks.

For readers outside Japan

For now, this is a place to visit rather than a bottle to look for. Nothing will be on sale until 2030 at the earliest, and Kobayashi Shuzo has not announced the style, cask policy, strength or export plans for its first release. Treat Nikko distillery as a name to follow, not a product to hunt for, and be wary of any listing that claims to offer its whisky before then.

Nikko is home to the UNESCO-listed Toshogu shrine complex and is about two hours north of central Tokyo by train. Nikkei reports that the company is working with the Tobu Railway (東武鉄道) group, which runs one of the main routes to Nikko, to develop the distillery as a tourism destination. Tour times, booking rules and any on-site shop have not been published in the material we could verify, so check before building a trip around a visit.

If you want to try whisky from Tochigi today, Nishibori Shuzo’s TETSU is the realistic option, though its releases are small and mostly sold through Japanese retailers. Nikkei reported in October 2025 that the brewery planned to export its first whisky, but availability outside Japan will be limited. Travelers can look for it in Japan, and our guide to where to buy Japanese whisky in Tokyo covers the best places to start. For a working distillery visit on the same trip, see our guides to visiting the Yamazaki distillery and to Chichibu, another small distillery that started from nothing and built an international name.

Sources

More posts