Wakatsuru Shuzo’s Saburomaru distillery (三郎丸蒸留所) in Tonami City, Toyama Prefecture, announced on August 13, 2026 that it had collected three Highest Gold awards and one Gold medal at the Asia World Spirits Competition 2026, run by the Singapore-based judging body The Tasting Alliance. The results extend a run of 2026 award wins for a distillery that has built its reputation on heavily peated, smoky whisky rather than the lighter style most associated with Japanese single malt.
The three Highest Gold winners were all from Saburomaru’s SAB. blended whisky line: SAB. Sunset Red (46% ABV, sold in 200ml and 700ml), SAB. Night Black (46% ABV, also sold in both sizes), and SAB. Ocean Blue 1st Batch (46% ABV, 700ml), a malt-and-grain blend. A fourth award, a Gold medal, went to a single cask release from the distillery’s Sangokushi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) series: Single Cask Saburomaru “Guan” #100365, bottled at 60% ABV in 700ml. That cask-strength bottling had already sold out in Japan before the award was announced.
The Asia World Spirits Competition judges entries blind, with buyers and industry professionals tasting without knowing the brand, producer or price. Saburomaru’s showing follows two other 2026 results reported earlier this year: a Highest Gold for Single Malt Saburomaru VI “The Lovers” Cask Strength at the Tokyo Whisky & Spirits Competition (TWSC2026), and four Gold medals at the International Spirits Challenge (ISC2026) in the UK, including for the export-only Mizunara Head 5-Year-Old single cask.
Why it matters beyond Japan
Saburomaru has leaned into peat for more than 70 years, using a coal-fired mizunara-oak kiln that gives its whisky a smoky character closer to Islay than to the delicate, fruit-forward profile most drinkers associate with Yamazaki or Hakushu. Stacking Highest Gold results across three separate international competitions in a single year, TWSC, ISC and now AWSC, signals that the style is winning over judges outside Japan even as wide retail availability abroad has not been confirmed for the SAB. series specifically. For collectors tracking which smaller Japanese distilleries are building an international track record, Saburomaru is now one of the clearest cases in 2026.
Why this matters
Wakatsuru Shuzo (若鶴酒造) has been brewing sake in Tonami since 1862, and it only turned to whisky in 1952 out of necessity: wartime rice shortages and the 1945 Toyama air raids had cut sake output so sharply that the brewery went looking for a spirit it could distil from something other than rice. That improvised pivot became Saburomaru distillery, the only whisky maker in the Hokuriku region and one of Japan’s oldest surviving craft distilleries. For decades it was a minor name even inside Japan, overshadowed by the much larger distilleries that Suntory and Nikka had built in Yamazaki, Hakushu, Yoichi and Miyagikyo over the same period.
The turnaround traces to Takahiko Inagaki (稲垣貴彦), the fifth-generation director who took over operations and rebuilt the house style around his great-grandfather’s original commitment to peat, under the motto “The Ultimate Peat.” Inagaki’s team also partnered with Oigo Manufacturing (老子製作所), a Takaoka bronze-casting foundry, to build ZEMON, the world’s first cast-iron pot still, installed in 2018. The thicker cast walls and rougher internal surface than a hammered copper still are credited with giving Saburomaru’s new-make its distinctive heavy, Islay-leaning smoke. A distillery that revived itself by leaning harder into a style most of Japan had moved away from, then had that bet validated by three separate international juries in 2026, is a useful data point for how a small regional producer can carve out a niche against Suntory and Nikka’s lighter house styles.
For readers outside Japan
None of the four award-winning bottlings, SAB. Sunset Red, SAB. Night Black, SAB. Ocean Blue 1st Batch, or the single cask “Guan” #100365, have been announced for international distribution as of this report, and the cask-strength “Guan” had already sold out in Japan before the award was made public, so it will not reappear through ordinary retail channels. Readers outside Japan should not assume the AWSC win means these specific bottles are coming to their market.
That said, Saburomaru as a brand is not unknown abroad. Specialist auction and import platforms such as Whisky Auctioneer and Dekanta have carried other Saburomaru expressions, including older single malts and limited single casks, though stock is sporadic and prices run well above Japanese retail. Readers who want a heavily peated Japanese whisky they can actually source today have a more realistic shot with distilleries that already run established export programs, such as Chichibu or Mars Komagatake’s peated sherry-cask single malt, while watching Saburomaru’s distillery guide and news coverage for any future export announcement. Until an official importer is named, treat any listing claiming to ship the AWSC-winning bottles abroad with caution.
Background on the distillery’s equipment and other recent releases: how mizunara oak shapes Japanese whisky, Saburomaru’s mizunara-aged SAB. Ocean Blue 2nd Batch, and what a cask-strength number like 60% ABV actually means.
Source: Gourmet Press (Japanese)
Primary sources: Wakatsuru Shuzo official announcement (Japanese) and Saburomaru distillery history, Wakatsuru Shuzo (Japanese).