Nikka Whisky Yoichi Distillery (ニッカウヰスキー余市蒸溜所) - updated blog! (How to go, what to expect)

I wrote about the Nikka Whisky Yoichi Distillery before, but a lot has changed over the past six years. So I decided to write a new blog post to share the updates with everyone.

How to go to Nikka Whisky Yoichi Distillery :

You’ll need to take a train to Otaru first, then transfer to another train that goes to Yoichi.

Once you arrive at Otaru Station, you need to transfer platforms. Just head down the stairs but do not exit the station, and go to the other side of the platform to catch the train to Yoichi.

this is your view as you get out of Otaru station, you should be waiting on this side

We arrived at Yoichi around lunch time!

I’d recommend buying tickets if you’ll go here too as you’ll be forced to pay for the difference as well and the line was long

sometimes the time gap is a bit big so take note of the train time!

Since it was already lunchtime, we decided to look for a place to eat. I found a pizza spot on Google, so we went with that. We were actually choosing between a herring ramen restaurant and the pizza place, since herring ramen seems to be quite popular in this area.

The pizza place called Farm to Peel is located between the station and the Nikka Whisky Yoichi Distillery.

Everything we ordered was so good! We didn’t expect the pizza to taste that amazing. We were really happy!

After lunch, we headed straight to the Nikka Distillery. I was excited to show my brother the fun my dad and I had six years ago, but when we got there, we were shocked and really sad.

Apparently, you need to make a reservation to tour the distillery, and there’s a separate entrance for people without reservations 🙁 .

The tour is free, but reservations are now mandatory. They’ve closed off a lot of areas for people without reservations, so we were only able to explore a limited space. My dad said the place probably got so many tourists after the pandemic that they had to change the system.

If you want to visit too, make sure to book your reservation in advance by clicking here! The website should look like this.

Since we didn’t have a reservation, we had to walk quite a bit just to get into the distillery. They let us enter through the parking area 😐.

Since we were only allowed in a limited area, we just checked out the gift shop, museum, and tasting area.

My brother said it was a shame we couldn’t explore more but he still had fun nonetheless and honestly that was good enough for me 🥹.

We couldn’t see the big barrels inside the distillery anymore since I think that’s part of the reserved tour now. They were thoughtful enough to put a smaller version at the station, and that’s where I took my photo before we left Yoichi.