Yamazaki 25 wins another Japanese whisky award
Suntory's flagship single malt took the International Spirits Challenge's Japanese whisky trophy for a fourth straight year, as Glenmorangie claimed the competition's top overall prize.
Yamazaki 25 Years Old has won the Japanese whisky award at the International Spirits Challenge for a fourth year running, Suntory Global Spirits said on 7 October.
The expression, matured in a mix of American white oak, Spanish oak and Mizunara Japanese oak casks, took the ISC's Japanese Whisky Trophy in London. It follows Yamazaki 12 Years Old, which won the same category trophy in 2024, and Yamazaki 18 Years Old, which won it in 2025.
Suntory also collected Double Gold for Hakushu Single Malt Peated Malt 18 Years Old and Hakushu Single Malt 25 Years Old, and was named the ISC's Japanese Whisky Producer of the Year for a seventh consecutive year. ISC judges, who score entries on quality, balance and character, called Yamazaki "a global benchmark in quality whisky."
A fourth straight trophy win says more about consistency than luck.
A fourth win for Japanese whisky
Yamazaki 25 Years Old first appeared in 1999 and was reworked in 2021 around two ideas Suntory calls tsukuriwake, the diversity of its whisky-making, and tsukurikomi, the craft behind it. Chief blender Shinji Fukuyo called the win "profoundly meaningful," pointing to the generations of distillers who have worked at the Yamazaki distillery in Osaka prefecture since 1923.
The ISC's overall prize, Supreme Champion Spirit, went elsewhere this year. Glenmorangie The Thirty Years Old took that title, ending a run in which a Yamazaki whisky had topped the competition for three straight years, trade title The Whiskey Wash reported. Six whiskies won trophies in total this year: four Scotch, one American bourbon and the single Japanese entry.
A standard built to guard the category
The win lands as Suntory rolls a Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association logo onto its bottles, marking whiskies that meet the association's domestic standard: distilled, matured and bottled entirely in Japan. The rules, introduced in 2021, were designed to separate authentic releases from blends assembled abroad and sold under a Japanese name.
Pressure on raw materials runs across Japan's drinks industry, not just whisky. This year, sake rice quality fell as the country's summers heated up, pushing some brewers toward earlier harvests and higher-grade imports. Outside Japan, national whisky categories keep expanding too: in India, Allied Blenders is backing a new single malt plant in Aurangabad.
Suntory has not said whether the award will change allocation of Yamazaki 25 Years Old, a bottling already rationed through ballots in Japan and limited retail drops abroad. Past ISC wins for the range have tightened supply further within days.
The ISC's next Japanese Whisky Trophy is due in 2027. A fifth consecutive win for Yamazaki would be a first for the category.
