Although Japan is quite a distance from the global whiskey stronghold of Scotland, the advanced islanders are showing an increasingly strong affinity for locally produced representatives of the wood barrel-matured spirit. Masataka Taketsuru founded his first distillery on home soil in 1934 after learning whiskey craft in Scotland for several years and having worked at Suntory for ten years. Two distilleries and several maturing and filling plants, which are spread all over Japan, belong to the Nikka empire today. The company was named "Distiller of the Year" in 2015 at the highly regarded International Spirits Challenge.