TWE Karuizawa Whisky Trip Pt.7: Endgame for Karuizawa
At the time of the acquisition of the casks in summer 2011, Number One were led to believe that they could keep the casks in Karuizawa’s warehouses. Shortly afterwards, however, they were informed by Kirin that the distillery site had been sold and that they would have to remove the casks from Karuizawa and arrange storage for them elsewhere. Fortunately for Number One, Ichiro Akuto, who bottles their whiskies for them, had just constructed a new warehouse down the road from his Chichibu distillery and kindly agreed to take in the homeless Karuizawa casks.
Unless we believe that Kirin have more squirrelled away somewhere (which seems unlikely given their evident lack of concern for the distillery and its output, not to mention the legal assurances Number One would no doubt have received in their contract), then Number One Drinks have the whole stock.
Unfortunately, if the thousands of casks referred to by Buxrud did exist at the time of the book we have to assume that they were either blended away, redistilled or simply poured down the gutter at some point in the last few years before the Number One sale occurred. That sounds absurd, but it’s not impossible. Big companies can work in breathtakingly stupid ways sometimes.
Moreover, as we know, after refusing to sell the distillery itself to Number One Drinks (who wanted to revive it), and telling them that the property was not for sale, Mercian / Kirin sold Karuizawa’s stock to Number One and then sold the entire site to somebody else almost immediately.
Maar ja ik kan het niet laten. En door dit hier te zetten wordt mijn kans alleen maar kleiner 
Aan de andere kant heb ik er vertrouwen in dat de Japanse Goden mij goed gezind zijn (de NL douanebeambten wat minder 
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