"Mars Malt Le Papillon" is a series that captures the splendor of Japan's natural environment and its four distinct seasons—which shape our whisky's maturation—through the motif of butterflies native to Japan.
This expression is themed after the "Benihikage" (Erebia niphonica), a butterfly designated as a Natural Monument of Nagano Prefecture, primarily inhabiting grasslands above 1,500 meters in Honshu.
Inspired by this alpine butterfly, we have vatted three Wine casks to create this exceptional triple-cask single malt whisky, distilled at Mars Komagatake Distillery.

The Benihikage is an "alpine butterfly" designated as a Natural Monument of Nagano Prefecture. Its ancestral home lies in the northern regions of the Eurasian continent. It migrated to the Japanese archipelago during the last glacial period when the land was connected to the continent. Sharing this same origin is the Yanagiran (fireweed), often called the "Queen of the Summer Highlands." Both can be found in flower fields at elevations above 1,500 meters in Shinshu.
Wishing to capture a single frame of these two "old friends" reunited across the vastness of time, I visited the subalpine zone of Shinshu many times. On August 15, 2018, I found Yanagiran blooming beside a path in the Ikenotaira Wetlands of the Mt. Asama range. After waiting for about an hour... just as I had hoped, a Benihikage arrived.This is a triple-cask single malt whisky, created by vatting three casks of malt whisky distilled at Mars Komagatake Distillery in 2018—a Wine cask finish whisky evoking a sense of "eternal time."
Label photo and text by Shuichi Ogino.