My husband and I had a blast, doing the free tour here at the distillery. He's a huge fan of the Nikka whiskey products. An hour tour gives you a tour guide who will walk you through the entire property and explain the delicate and complex steps taken to produce their fine whiskey. That, topped with a free tasting (must be over 20+ age) to end the tour, and we loved it. There is an audio tour available to visitors who do not speak Japanese, that can be downloaded on your phone. The English version we used was a big help.
You can book reservations in advance online or by phone, and it's super easy and convenient. Note, they do the tour regardless of rain or shine, and we did the tour during a light rain. So be ready to dress for the weather!
Absolutely amazing experience. First, you must pre book in order to have the tour. There is an English guide for your phone, but you'll need cell service in Japan (or wifi though I didn't ask). It really made the whole experience accessible for an English speaker.
After the 50-minute tour, there is a tasting. It was pretty basic stuff: the Yoichi single malt (not basic), Nikka Super Blend, and the Apple Wine. It was still very nice for the total price of $0 per person. 😯😯😯
After the tour, you can go view the museum and pay to taste other Nikka whisky and some other whisky brands (they own a few).
We splurged for the IX decades. Be warned, it's ¥10,000 for 10ml. That's basically 1/70 of a bottle. But it was enough for both my wife and I to taste and enjoy.
We've now visited 3 whisky distilleries in Japan, and this has been our favorite.
Not very languages friendly free guided tours except for Japanese with online reservation only.
They produced Peat/smokey taste whiskey mainly but also have some other too.
The entire distillery is a historical site. The guided tours will less about 40 minutes.
There is a small museum, restaurant and gift shop.
Amazing experience! Make sure to reserve ahead of time for the tour. Really interesting to walk through the whole distillery and see how things were made and the history plus the whiskey tasting at the end was great. They also have a bar where you can taste rare aged whiskeys which were delicious, one of the best highlights of our trip to Hokkaido.
Do book tickets in advance, along with tasting, great place to go!
If you are going to Otaru, do go to Yoichi as well, just to see this.
With the tour, get there 15min before scheduled time to check in, if you are there earlier than 15min, you can roam around the courtyard till time, then you’ll be asked to go to the reception/ticket counter to show your reservations and pick up a drinks ticket. You will also be given a QR code to scan, to view translations of the tour. I find the translation website a tad laggy. In times like this; pull out Google translate and let the voice recording run.
I went for the 12pm tour, by the time we got to the tasting section, it was 12:45pm. We sat around to taste the flight provided with the tour till 1:20pm, enjoying the view of the trees, then left to the souvenir shops to pick stuff up.
There’s a stamp card to collect, you’d have to visit 4 areas to complete the card.
Because of the stamp card, we went to the museum, where you can do more taste tests. Each 15ml test can range between 300-10,000 yen (yes, that’s $100 for 10ml) this is 2pm
Walked around a bit more till we got back to the front entrance at 2:50pm before leaving. You can spend 3hrs just in here, be prepared.
It isn’t crowded. It’s a ticketed area, so everything is nice and peaceful. Highly recommend a visit.
