The Hombo Shuzo Co, the owners of Mars Whisky, have been producing spirit in Japan since way back in 1872, when they specialised in making shochu and plum wine. It wasn’t until 1949 that they gained a license to produce whisky at their Kagoshima plant, but even then, they only used it to produce blends from whisky sourced elsewhere. 

Another decade would pass before they started to make their own whisky, however, they chose to do that at a new plant in Yamanashi. Kiichiro Iwai, an advisor at Mars who had been the great Masataka Taketsuru’s supervisor at Setsu, built the distillery armed with Taketsuru’s famed notebook, allowing him to incorporate many of the techniques and skills that the “Father of Japanese Whisky” had picked up throughout the years.

Despite successfully building the distillery and producing their own whisky, things weren’t to be for Mars in Yamanashi. The market simply wasn’t ripe for whisky, with Shochu dominating spirits sales around the country, and so in 1969 they stopped production.

Not quite ready to throw in the towel, Mars tried again in 1981, this time back in their home of Kagoshima. This attempt lasted just 3 years, before it was closed down in 1984, with operations being moved to the newly built Shinshu distillery, located in the Nagano prefecture. Shinshu operated uninterrupted until 1992, but yet again, demand for Japanese whisky was simply not there and so they could no longer continue production.

Despite closing the doors, Mars was still not ready to give up on whisky production and, after the Japanese whisky boom of the early 2000s, production was started up again in 2011. Since then Shinshu has produced some incredibly impressive expressions, mostly sold under the Mars Komagatake label, some of which were awarded medals at the World Whiskies Awards. 

Mars Shinshu Distillery is situated in Miyada, Nagano prefecture - 2,618 feet above sea level - encompassed by the Japanese Alps, which are depicted in designs used for single malt bottlings. 

Shinshu mainly works with two types of imported barley - non peated and peated (50ppm). Since 2020 however, Shinshu has also experimented with locally-grown Koharu Nijo barely, a strain developed in Japan with a higher tolerance to cold weather. The spirit distilled from this local strain tends to be sweeter and more fragrant.