Islay Weblog: Islay Malt Whisky in Japan

I received an email this morning from Takeshi, who lives in Japan and visited Islay several times. He was so kind to send me the following story (thanks Takeshi):

Mr Sadaaki Horiuch is an owner of Pub Mahorobi, Nagano, Japan. His pub is situated in Matsumoto, a traditional town that has an old castle and famous for a good collection of Scotch Single Malt Whisky. He visited Scotland many times and took a lot of photos. He opened his web to show his photo gallery in 2004. His photo collection is enormous but his 'The Lost Distilleries in Scotland' page is very special. He researched various materials and visited local people to find out closed distilleries. The result is wonderful. He found out 57 distilleries and the photos are displayed in his archive pages. Some are still used as a part of working distillery, some are used as a personal warehouse and some are ruins. Anyway it is very interesting to see how the lost distilleries exist today. Of course you can see the buildings to be the new Port Charlotte Distillery. Fortunately English pages are available.

I have visited Mr Sadaaki's website and was impressed by the amount of pictures and information. There is a very nice gallery with pictures from all over Scotland and Islay available from the Mahorobi homepage. The Lost Distilleries section is extensive and has some nice pictures and information about the Lochindaal distillery which will be (re)opened to become the Port Charlotte Distillery and the Port Ellen Distillery.

The picture I have added is made in the area close to Matsumoto in Japan. There are more pictures available from this beautiful part of the world in the pub section of his website.

Islay Malt Whisky in Japan

Tuesday, March 13 2007