Nikka's founder Masataka Taketsuru is considered the father of Japanese whisky. After completing studies in chemistry, he was recruited by the Settsu Shuzo company, who sent him to Scotland in 1918 to complete his apprenticeship. There he developed a passion for whisky and decided to dedicate his life to it. In 1934, he built Yoichi, his first distillery, on the island of Hokkaido. Its growing success enabled him to establish a second distillery in 1969, near Sendai, named Miyagikyo. It is from the single malts of these two distilleries that the Nikka Whisky group produces its entire range of Japanese whiskies.

Taketsuru 21 Year Old, which is named after Nikka’’s founder Masataka Taketsuru, is a blend of whiskies from the group’’s two distilleries, Yoichi and Miyagikyo. Taketsuru is a key figure in the history of Japanese whisky, as it was he who travelled to Scotland to learn how to make whisky from 1918 to 1921. Upon his return, he worked for a short time for Kotobukiya, before founding what would later become Nikka and building Yoichi in Hokkaido in 1934. This version of Taketsuru 21 Year Old, bottled to mark the group’’s 80th anniversary in 2014, is finished in a Madeira cask.