Lot presentation

Mars Hombo Shuzo 150th Anniversary - Komagatake x Tsunuki (3 bottles signed)

The wine

Donated by Hombo Shuzo
Boasting a rich heritage of over 150 years of distillation and blending, the Mars distilleries are owned by the Hombo Shuzo company, a long-standing producer of Japan’’s ancestral spirit shochu.
Hombo was officially founded by Matsuzaemon Hombo in Kagoshima in 1872. In 2022, to celebrate its 150th anniversary and pay tribute to its history, Mars created a very limited edition whisky available only to its employees and close friends. Created from a double cask composed of a single cask Shinshu and a single cask Tsunuki, this Japanese blended malt is a testament to Mars’’ creativity and expertise in the art of blending.
From this extremely limited anniversary edition, the brand has kindly donated three bottles not released for sale. Brought together in a wooden box specially designed for the occasion, this series is all the more exceptional as each unique bottle is signed, the first by Hombo’’s president, the second by the master blender, and the third by both Hombo’’s president and master blender.

About the Producer Mars - Shinshu

Japan, Nagano. Distillery operational. Owner: Hombo Shuzo Co. Ltd.

Founded in 1985, Mars-Shinshu had been a distillery in-the-making since 1918. Its history has something of the “back to the future” about it. In 1918, Kijiro Iwai, director of Settsu Shozu, sent Masataka Taketsuru to Scotland to learn the basics of distillation. On his return in 1920, he found his employer at the head of a company that had gone adrift. Settsu Shozu was unable to follow through on its plans for a new distillery and in the end it was Shinjiro Torii (Suntory) that benefited from Taketsuru's experience first, using it to found the Yamazaki distillery. In 1960, Kijiro Iwai's son-in-law, then director of the Hombo company, decided to take up the challenge. Drawing on the experience of his father-in-law and Taketsuru's notes, he began distilling a robust, smoky malt at one of his wine and brandy production units in Yamanashi. Quite unsuited to the tastes of Japanese consumers at the time who were accustomed to more subtle flavours, it was a commercial failure. In 1978, however, he made a second attempt at the Kagoshima site, before finally deciding to open Mars-Shinshu in 1985. Caught up in the upheaval of a crisis in whisky consumption in Japan, the distillery ceased production in 1992. In 2011, following major restoration work, Mars-Shinshu then opened once again, this time for the long run.