Recognition at the 2025 Bartender Spirits Awards marked a defining moment for Ikawa Distillery. Awarded Single Malt Whiskey of the Year for its Dessin Series Fauna 2025, the distillery emerged as a compelling new voice in Japanese whisky, one rooted not in tradition for tradition’s sake, but in a contemporary ethos of harmony, environmental stewardship, and place-based storytelling. Crafted in the high elevations of Japan’s Southern Alps, Fauna 2025 is a peated whisky inspired by the Rock Ptarmigan, blending character and complexity with a vision that extends far beyond the bottle.

In this conversation, Distillery Manager and Blender Yasuhide Seto, General Affairs Supervisor Hitoshi Michino, and President Kohei Suzuki of parent company Juzan Co., Ltd. reflect on the award’s meaning, their distinctive production approach, and their ambitions for cultivating not just markets, but understanding. At Ikawa, whisky is a medium for expressing nature, nurturing balance, and sparking connection.

Image: Distillery Manager and Blender Yasuhide Seto; Source: Ikawa Distillery.

Congratulations on your win. What does being named Single Malt Whiskey of the Year at the 2025 Bartender Spirits Awards mean for a distillery as young and philosophically rooted as Ikawa?

Yasuhide Seto and Hitoshi Michino: 
At Ikawa Distillery, our mission is to produce high-quality whisky through traditional methods. The upcoming releases in our Dessin Series are themed around harmony between flora(plants) and fauna(animals) in the mountains we own. As a young distillery, our philosophy is not yet widely known, but this award gives us an invaluable opportunity to share our vision of whisky-making and nature conservation with a broader audience. We are sincerely grateful for this recognition.

Image: Ikawa Distillery Single Malt Dessin Series Flora 2024 (Single Malt Whiskey) - Single Malt Whiskey of the Year at the 2025 Bartender Spirits Awards.

Fauna 2025 is described as a nuanced interplay of peat, cherry, malt, and sea smoke, with volcanic minerality. What inspired this particular expression, and how does it reflect the broader vision behind the Dessin Series?

Yasuhide Seto: 
The Dessin Series is composed of two streams: Flora, representing nonpeated whisky inspired by plants, and Fauna, representing peated whisky inspired by animals. Fauna 2025 marks our first peated release, themed around the Rock Ptarmigan (raichō). Our distillery is located in Japan’s Southern Alps, and we aimed to capture the feeling and character of the forested and mountainous landscapes. So, we selected Scottish peat. To reflect the natural habitat of the ptarmigan, we emphasized a balance of sweetness, bitterness, astringency, and fruity aromas behind the smoky notes. 

The grouse on the label isn’t just decorative—it reflects your connection to the Southern Alps ecosystem. How does nature, and specifically this region, inform your whisky-making ethos?

Yasuhide Seto and Hitoshi Michino: 
We produce a diverse array of new-make spirits by varying yeasts and cask types. Using natural spring water from the Southern Alps and aging in a mountainous climate, our whiskies truly embody their environment itself. When blending these diverse whiskies, we always prioritize harmony. Sweetness, bitterness, florality, fruitiness, maltiness—we seek complexity through balance. Likewise, ecosystems thrive on balance among plants, animals, and climatic elements like rain and fog. For us, harmony is central to both whisky-making and environmental stewardship. Our goal is a sustainable cycle—crafting whisky using nature’s bounty and reinvesting profits into conservation.

Image: Scenic View from the Mountain and an alpine plant native to the Southern Alps, where the distillery is located.

How are you positioning Ikawa in the international market? Can you tell us where Fauna 2025 is currently available—both in retail and on-premise channels—and which importers or partners you’re working with in the US and other key markets?

Hitoshi Michino: 
We produce a very limited volume—only about 6,000 bottles of Fauna 2025 were made. While we primarily serve the Japanese market, we’re beginning to expand abroad. Fortunately, our first export destination is the U.S., the home of BSA. California-based SIPT (https://www.siptglobal.com/) now imports our whisky. Their founder visited Japan and even drove 10 hours round-trip to visit our distillery, demonstrating a deep understanding of our brand. 

We are actively seeking passionate partners who resonate with Ikawa’s values. Long-term mutual understanding is far more important to us than scale.

Image: Ikawa Distillery Single Malt Dessin Series Fauna 2025 - Japanese Whiskey Of The Year at 2025 Bartender Spirits Awards.

How are you helping your importers and distributors build demand for Fauna 2025 and future expressions? What kind of marketing, trade activation, or education do you provide to support sell-through?

Hitoshi Michino: 
Given Ikawa’s premium positioning, conveying its value is crucial. We emphasize publicity-driven, pull-style demand generation. Alongside our commitment to quality, we strive for distinctiveness—such as producing at 1,200m elevation, aging in our own forest, and promoting sustainability. In Japan, we host seminars that offer a full sensory and narrative experience. To support future overseas seminars, our team is actively improving their English. We also leverage our forests to engage not only whisky enthusiasts but also nature lovers such as hikers. Our aim is not to compete in an existing market but to cultivate a new whisky audience.

Could you speak to the sustainability commitments at Juzan Co., Ltd.? Beyond the motifs drawn from nature, are there environmental or community-focused practices embedded in your production or sourcing?

Kohei Suzuki (President): 
Juzan Co., Ltd. embraces the mission of inspiring a love for nature and a desire to protect it. Sustainability in our company-owned Ikawa Forest is crucial. We manage wastewater rigorously, repurpose spent grains as animal feed, use renewable electricity, grow local Mizunara oak for casks, and reuse wood offcuts and malt bulk bags. Additionally, we offset all CO₂ emissions from the distillery through carbon credits generated by our forest’s absorption capacity.

Image: Ikawa Distillery.

Now that you've won this influential trade award in the US, how do you plan to leverage this recognition? Will we see campaigns, collaborations, or new distribution partnerships built around this win?

Hitoshi Michino: 
We’re honored to win such a prestigious award at this early stage. We also take pride in helping elevate the global reputation of Japanese whisky. As we build our global distribution network, this recognition will be a major asset. We have just completed our first release, and we are still exploring our path. We believe in taking steady, manageable steps toward our long-term vision.

What’s next for the Dessin Series? With plans for over 20 motifs, will each continue to express a different voice within your broader concept of harmony?

Yasuhide Seto and Hitoshi Michino: 
Harmony is the central concept and the greatest challenge of this series. We aim to create layered whiskies that reveal various nuances over time. Each future motif, Flora(plants) and Fauna(animals) will appear on the label, while the carton will depict its natural habitat. We hope drinkers enjoy not only the harmony between label and carton but also between the whisky and its motif.

Image: Deputy Head Distiller, Mr. Murofushi (left) and Head Distiller and Blender Yasuhide Seto. (right).

Conclusion:

Ikawa Distillery may have just begun exporting, but its approach suggests a long game built on mutual respect, shared values, and environmental stewardship. With only 6,000 bottles of Fauna 2025 produced, the distillery isn’t chasing volume but resonance, seeking importers who understand the nuance behind every label and consumers who appreciate whisky as a reflection of landscape and intent. As future releases in the Dessin Series unfold, Ikawa’s commitment to harmony among ingredients, ecosystems, and partners seems less a brand statement and more a lived philosophy, now amplified by international recognition.

In conversation with Malvika Patel, Editor and VP, Beverage Trade Network

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