Regular visitors to these pages may by now recognise the significance of Grand Seiko and appreciate the clear air that sits between it and its parent company Seiko. Even so, to say that Grand Seiko enjoys a stealthy profile beyond its greatest admirers would not be an exaggeration.
The arrival of the Grand Seiko White Birch may therefore not be logged as it should. This watch, which comes out of the woods today to join Grand Seiko’s Heritage Collection, features the sort of movement and the kind of finishing that would create far more noise were it to have come out of Switzerland or Germany.
Let’s start, as we must then, with the movement. Inside the White Birch is Grand Seiko’s new generation “Hi-Beat” Caliber 9SA5. Introduced last year during the brand’s 60th anniversary, it was said to have taken no fewer than nine years to develop. Call that slow if you will, but better might be methodical. The fruit of Grand Seiko’s labours is a high-frequency calibre that beats at 36,000vph (most mechanicals beat at 28,800vph) and is accurate to +5 to -3 seconds a day – well inside the tolerances set by Switzerland’s independent chronometer testing institute, COSC. Despite the power drain of such a device, 9SA5 still has a thumping 80-hour reserve. Movements with comparable specs are few and far between.
Enveloping that is a 40mm stainless-steel case that’s swiftly upstaged by the dial, which is textured to resemble the trunks of a birch forest. As per many of its Swiss counterparts on the other side of the world, Grand Seiko likes to inject its watches with local references, in this case shirakaba, the white birch tree forests that blanket large areas of northern Japan, where Grand Seiko’s Shizukuishi and Shinshu studios are located. ("Shira" meaning white and “kaba” meaning birch, for the etymologists out there.)
What’s strange at this point is that Grand Seiko, so proud of its finishing techniques – such as the zaratsu polishing that gives this watch’s hands and hour markers their unblemished, mirror-like finish – hasn’t revealed how it made the dial. One would like to assume it’s been hand-crafted in the spirit of the brand, but for now we don't know.
Beyond the dial, the design deviates little from Grand Seiko’s core portfolio – a range of timepieces that historically have been organised according to an arcane nomenclature. For instance, last year the brand delivered sister pieces to the White Birch called the SLGH002 and SLH003. In the case of this reviewer, those names sail through the frontal lobes without docking. Perhaps conscious of the limitations of its audience, this year Grand Seiko has begun talking about a “Series 9 Design” family of watches, which should help differentiate them in the minds of the layman.
So, the Grand Seiko Series 9 Design White Birch. Maybe that will stick better. As a natural descendent of the gloriously utilitarian 44GS of 1967, Grand Seiko’s historic totem, it deserves to.
£8,500. grand-seiko.com
