Taketsuru Pure Malt review: what you are actually paying for

Taketsuru Pure Malt carries a name most Japanese whisky drinkers recognize before they know what is in the bottle. We have not tasted it, so this guide will not tell you whether it deserves its awards on flavor alone. What it can tell you is what actually happened to this specific whisky in 2020, why the bottle on shelves today is a different recipe from the one that built the name’s reputation, and what that means for the roughly $80 it costs now versus what the retired age-stated versions cost on the secondary market.

What is actually in the bottle

Taketsuru Pure Malt is a blended malt whisky — meaning it combines single malt whisky from more than one distillery, rather than grain whisky or a single site’s output. Nikka builds it from malt whisky matured at both of its distilleries: Yoichi on the coast of Hokkaido and Miyagikyo near Sendai on the Japanese mainland. It carries no age statement and is bottled at 43% ABV. According to Nikka’s own description of the blend, Miyagikyo malt supplies fruity, floral character and a silky texture, while Yoichi’s sherry-cask and peated malts contribute the body and smoky depth on top of it — the same two-distillery structure Nikka has used to build Taketsuru since the brand existed, even as the specific recipe has changed over time.

The name is not a marketing invention

Taketsuru is named directly after Masataka Taketsuru (竹鶴政孝), the engineer Nikka and much of the Japanese whisky industry credit as the father of Japanese whisky. Taketsuru traveled to Scotland in 1918 to study distilling firsthand, an apprenticeship few Japanese engineers had attempted before him, and brought that training home to found what became Nikka. He built Yoichi, the company’s first distillery, in 1934, specifically searching for a Hokkaido site whose cool, maritime climate could approximate Scotland’s — a decision covered in more depth in our guide to Yoichi distillery. He later added Miyagikyo in 1969 as a second site built to produce a different, softer malt character than Yoichi’s, giving Nikka’s blenders two distinct house styles to combine, which our guide to Miyagikyo distillery covers in full. Putting his name on Nikka’s flagship blended malt is not incidental branding; it is a claim that this specific bottle represents the two-distillery blending philosophy he personally built the company around.

What happened in 2020

The Taketsuru Pure Malt sold today is not the same recipe that built the name’s reputation through the 2000s and 2010s. Nikka’s parent company Asahi announced on January 16, 2020 that it would discontinue the entire existing Taketsuru Pure Malt lineup — the no-age-statement version along with the 17, 21, and 25 Year Old expressions — by the end of March 2020, and replace the NAS bottle with a reformulated blend. Japanese trade press covering the announcement, including Shokuhin Sangyo Shimbun, reported the reformulated Taketsuru launching nationwide on March 31, 2020, capped at 22,000 cases (700ml × 12 bottles) per year for the domestic market, at a suggested price of ¥4,000 before tax.

The reason given was the same one behind nearly every other Japanese age-stated whisky pulled from shelves in the same period: a shortage of matured stock. Nikka had not set aside enough aged malt in the 1990s and 2000s — years when Japanese whisky demand was falling, not rising — to keep supplying 17, 21, and 25-year commitments once international demand for the category recovered sharply. Our explainer on the Japanese whisky shortage covers how widespread that same stock crunch was across Nikka and Suntory alike; Taketsuru’s aged range was one of its most visible casualties, since unlike a no-age-statement bottle, Nikka could not simply substitute younger malt into a whisky legally required to carry a 17-, 21-, or 25-year claim.

What changed in the blend itself

The 2020 version is not simply a rebadged continuation of the old NAS Taketsuru. According to Japanese-language coverage of the renewal, Nikka increased the proportion of Yoichi malt in the blend specifically to add more body and a longer, smokier, peated finish than the outgoing version had, while keeping Miyagikyo’s softer, fruitier malt as the other half of the blend’s identity. That is a deliberate character shift, not just a supply-driven reformulation: Nikka used the forced rebuild as an opportunity to push Taketsuru’s profile toward Yoichi’s heavier, coastal style rather than simply replicating the discontinued NAS recipe with whatever malt happened to be available. Whether that shift makes the current bottle better or worse than what it replaced is a taste judgment this guide is not making; what is verifiable is that the blend ratio, not just the stock behind it, changed in 2020.

A no-age-statement blend that keeps winning awards

Despite losing its age statement, Taketsuru Pure Malt has not lost critical recognition. The World Whiskies Awards named it World’s Best Blended Malt in 2023 — the awards body’s own winner listing confirms the category, year, and Nikka as producer, at 43% ABV with no age statement. Trade coverage of that result noted it was the tenth major award for the Taketsuru name overall, following earlier World’s Best Blended Malt wins for the 17 Year Old (2012, 2014, 2015, 2018), the 21 Year Old (2007, 2010, 2011), and the 25 Year Old (2019) before those expressions were discontinued. The current NAS bottle is, in award terms, a direct continuation of that record rather than a step down from it — a detail easy to miss if you assume dropping an age statement automatically means dropping quality.

What happened to the discontinued age-stated bottles

The retired 17, 21, and 25 Year Old expressions did not disappear from the market — they moved to auction, and prices there reflect the same scarcity that ended their production. Whisky auction tracking site WhiskyHunter’s aggregated data puts the average secondary-market price for a Taketsuru 17 Year Old bottle in the low hundreds of pounds, with the 21 Year Old averaging over £1,000 and running considerably higher at the top end. That is a real, documented secondary market, not a rumor — but it is worth being precise about what it is: a collector and auction market for a discontinued product, not a price Nikka or any authorized retailer will sell you a bottle for today. Anyone considering one of these bottles as a purchase should treat it as buying a specific, finite piece of stock at whatever the current auction market says it is worth, not as a whisky priced the way an in-production bottle is.

How Taketsuru Pure Malt compares with Nikka’s other core bottles

All four are NAS bottles clustered within about $50 of each other, which makes the choice mostly about structure rather than price. Taketsuru is the only one built specifically as a blend across Nikka’s two distilleries rather than a single site or a wider blend — the same two-distillery premise covered from the grain-whisky side in our Nikka From the Barrel review, a bottle built on a different structural idea entirely.

Is it worth what it costs today

Judged on what it is rather than what its name evokes, Taketsuru Pure Malt holds up as a reasonable purchase within its own category. It is priced in line with Nikka’s other core NAS bottles, its 2020 reformulation was a documented, stock-driven change rather than quiet cost-cutting, and it has continued winning the same major awards the aged expressions won before they were discontinued. Where a buyer should be careful is in assuming continuity with the pre-2020 bottle: the current Taketsuru Pure Malt is a different blend ratio, built under different supply constraints, from the whisky that first built the name’s reputation. Buyers specifically chasing that older recipe, or the reassurance of an age statement, will only find it on the auction market now, at auction prices — not on a retail shelf at anything resembling its old list price.

Sources

• Asahi Group Holdings, official press release announcing the Taketsuru Pure Malt renewal, January 16, 2020 (Japanese) — asahibeer.co.jp/news/2020/0116.html
• Shokuhin Sangyo Shimbun (食品産業新聞), trade press report on the Taketsuru Pure Malt renewal launch (Japanese) — ssnp.co.jp/news/liquor/2020/01/2020-0117-1127-14.html
• Nikkei, report on the Taketsuru Pure Malt renewal (Japanese) — nikkei.com/article/DGXLRSP526951_W0A110C2000000/
• World Whiskies Awards, official winner listing, World’s Best Blended Malt 2023 — worldwhiskiesawards.com/winner-whisky/worlds-best-blended-malt-43627-world-whiskies-awards-2023
• NIKKA WHISKY, official Taketsuru Pure Malt brand page — nikka.com/en/brands/taketsuru/
• WhiskyHunter, aggregated auction price data for Taketsuru 17 Year Old and 21 Year Old — whiskyhunter.net