The Legacy Begins
In 1918, Masataka Taketsuru, “The Father of Japanese Whisky”, travelled to Scotland to study the art of whisky-making. He studied chemistry at Glasgow University and apprenticed at three Scotch Whisky distilleries, picking up the tricks of the trade along the way, before returning to Japan with his newly beloved Scottish wife, Rita Cowan, and helping to launch the Yamazaki Distillery, Japan’s first dedicated whisky distillery, in 1923.
