Nikka Whisky Yoichi Distillery, Yoichi-cho

Fantastic place to visit if you are a whisky lover. The free tour requires booking ahead of time (I did it online via their Japanese website with the help of google translate). Note if you are travelling from Sapporo via train, there are very limited trains heading to Yoichi and can restrict what tour times you can make. I booked a 9:00am tour and caught a 7:14am train from Sapporo to Yoichi arriving at 8:30am. It is a short 5 minute walk from Yoichi station to the distillery grounds. Tour is all spoken in Japanese but the tour lady and security guard have these little laminated cards in English explaining each stage of the tour which was helpful. At the end of the tour they provide three free whisky tastings as well which is nice. Whisky for breakfast. Breakfast of champions =) After the tour you can then visit the museum and tasting bar (can only taste a maximum of 3). You can also visit their shop for well priced bottles of whisky's. Tip - there is also a restaurant as well which you can further order a whisky tasting set to sample three more Nikka whisky's, I cannot remember which whisky's they were though on the menu.

This distillery brought back bittersweet memories of my first trip here back in 2016. A guided tour is available but needs to pre-book way ahead. While I took JR from Sapporo to Yoichi 7 years ago, this time I drove a rental car all the way here. Without guided tour, we just walked around admiring the powdery view of the distillates covered in snow; then I went to their tasting room while the kids played with snow outside. They had changed a lot since my last visit and it’s more elegant and bigger space displaying the whiskies and history of the distillery. I paid for whisky tasting flight before buying the distillery exclusive whisky from the retail shop.