A liquid souvenir from the trip to Japan last year, which included a visit to Yamazaki! Peated, 48% ABV and non-chill filtered, and a reasonable price for a 180ml bottle. Most importantly, it's one tasty souvenir!
Of the two Suntory malt whisky distilleries, Yamazaki is definitely the easier to visit. Hakushu is without doubt the more beautiful site and the more scenic trip, being around two hour's train ride west of Tokyo in the Japanese Alps. It's a stunning location and a beautiful experience, and if you have the time I absolutely recommend Hakushu as the distillery to visit and spend time in. Yamazaki is far more convenient to visit, being an easy 40-minute train ride south-west from Kyoto station, and while it's basically in suburbia it's still an attractive place! Yamazaki Distillery was the first dedicated Japanese malt whisky distillery, built in 1923 by Shinjiro Torii with help from Masataka Taketsuru, who would go on to found his own company, Nikka, and build Yoichi Distillery in Hokkaido in 1934. Like all of the large Japanese malt whisky distilleries who unlike the Scotch whisky industry don't like sharing whisky or trading casks with their competitors, Suntory's Yamazaki produces a huge range of different whiskies by using different barley varieties, fermentation times, peating levels, wash & spirit still shapes & sizes, spirit cut points, and cask types - including American oak, Spanish oak, and Japanese Mizunara oak. Yamazaki has its own cooperage, located in Suntory's warehousing complex around 60km north-east of Yamazaki in Shiga Prefecture, which apparently has a storage capacity of more than 1.7-million casks. There are nine stainless washbacks and eight wooden washbacks in use, the wash stills are direct fired, and there are now a total of eighteen stills, some of which have worm tub condensers, with the rest having shell & tube condensers. The end goal of all of this variation is to create many styles of whisky for their blenders to play with in order to create their different single malts, which again stems back to the Japanese industry not trading casks or sharing knowledge between companies, as is done in Scotland.
Both of Suntory's malt whisky distilleries have visitor's centres, but there are some important points for those who are headed to Japan and want to visit them. Firstly and most importantly, unlike in Scotland or the U.S. you cannot just turn up to the distillery expecting to peruse the shop, taste some whisky, and buy a souvenir or two. To visit Hakushu or Yamazaki you must pre-book via the distilleries' websites, and they're often booked out well in advance, usually months ahead. So just fronting up to either distilleries' check-in counters, especially during peak times or major tourism seasons, will most likely get you turned away with polite apologies. This applies to both a full distillery tour, and just visiting the tasting bar and shop. At either site the proper distillery tours are paid ones, and they're reserved by ballot - usually selling out within a day or two of the date/s becoming available on the websites' booking system. Essentially, if you haven't entered the ballot and reserved your tour within this time frame, you're probably not going to get on the actual distillery tour. The other option is free and much more accessible, but will not let you step foot in the distillery itself. You'll only get access to the distillery museum, shop, and tasting bar, which are completely separate from the production facilities. Even then you can only book a one hour timeslot (in total including queuing time at the gift shop), you still have to make your reservation in advance, and you may have to be flexible with dates & times to get a slot, and/or be lucky enough to spot a cancellation on the online booking system. You'll then get to buy some merchandise, and if you're lucky also a small bottle of a distillery exclusive single malt - even the distillery shops do not usually have their regular products available for sale, particularly those with age statements, so don't make the trip to the distillery shop expecting to get a bottle of Yamazaki 12-year old at a bargain price. You're probably going to be disappointed. Japanese whisky is just as popular in Japan as it is elsewhere, if not more so, and the big brands and age stated products are difficult to find on Japanese shelves for a reasonable price. All of that said, it is absolutely worth the trip to Yamazaki for the museum, shop, and tasting bar alone, and also the scenery and local area - albeit nowhere near as beautiful as Hakushu. You'll be able to try the distilleries' products at the tasting bar, and the dram prices are reasonable - not as reasonable as they were prior to mid-2024, though. If you're wanting to try either of the 25-year old single malts or the Hibiki 30-year old at these tasting bars, you're now looking at over $100 AUD for a dram. That's a reasonable price by Australian whisky bar pricing standards (sadly), but it's certainly not cheap overall and is more than double what they were prior to mid-2024.
The cheaper and far better options at these tasting bars are the products that you can only try at the distilleries, such as new make spirit, cask components of the flagship single malts, or the distillery exclusive bottlings. For around $7-10 AUD you can try a pour of new make spirit from Chita grain distillery, and the respective malt distilleries' new make spirits, and three different cask component samples of their single malt. For example at Yamazaki you can try the single malt new make spirit, an ex-bourbon American oak cask sample, a Mizunara matured cask sample, a Spanish oak cask sample, a couple of limited release NAS single malts, and the current distillery exclusive bottling. There were two distillery exclusive Yamazaki single malts available during my visit; a 300ml American oak bottled at 40% ABV for around $40 AUD, and the one that I went for, a 180ml bottle of peated Yamazaki matured in Spanish oak bottled at 48% ABV, for around $37 AUD. All visitors are limited to one bottle per person. That 180ml bottle equates to around $125 for a full-size bottle, so that's a very reasonable price for a distillery exclusive Suntory single malt bottled at a decent strength - which is quite the rare thing. This distillery exclusive is not to be confused with the travel retail / duty free exclusive "Kogei Collection" peated Spanish oak bottlings that are only bottled at 43% ABV and are considerably more expensive, they're different products. This 48% ABV distillery exclusive bottling is clearly labelled as non-chill filtered, which is a strength and presentation normally reserved for the very expensive Suntory releases that are properly limited, like Yamazaki Golden Promise or Hakushu Heavily Peated. The majority of the Suntory range including the entire core range, from Hibiki Harmony to Hibiki 30-year old (which is over $10,000 AUD) blends, to Yamazaki & Hakushu 12-year old and 25-year old (also over $10,000 AUD), are all bottled at 43% and are chill filtered.
The details about this distillery exclusive peated Yamazaki are quite scarce. Were the Spanish oak casks virgin oak, or were they seasoned with sherry? The infamous Yamazaki Sherry Cask - the 2013 release which won an award and was largely responsible for the absolutely insane explosion in demand for Japanese whisky that hit around 2015 - was last released in 2016 and so seems to have been discontinued, while the Yamazaki Spanish Oak special release was last released in 2022. The earlier Sherry Cask expression used Spanish oak ex-sherry casks that were seasoned with Oloroso sherry for three years, so we can safely assume that this Spanish Oak expression is doing the same and it's just a name change. It seems to be a cask terminology thing with Suntory, where they refer to ex-bourbon casks simply as American Oak, and ex-sherry casks simply as Spanish Oak. Japanese Mizunara oak isn't seasoned with anything prior to first use, but those casks are used multiple times for whisky maturation due to their cost & rarity. The same goes for their "Puncheon" bottlings, which seem to be virgin American oak puncheons of 480-500-litres capacity, but again these are then refilled after first use. Suntory does also use ex-red wine casks and ex-umeshu plum wine casks on occasion, among some other oddities like cedar wood casks. The other mysterious point on this peated Yamazaki, which was a very rare thing itself until those travel exclusive "Kogei" peated malts were released, is where the peated malt was sourced from. There aren't any details available on this point, but since most Japanese distilleries are sourcing peated malted barley from Scotland or elsewhere internationally, we can assume it was the same story here. There is a separate Yamazaki Islay Peated bottling that was released in mid-2024, so at least we can assume this distillery exclusive doesn't use Islay peated malt i.e. from Port Ellen Maltings. Anyway, let's see how this $37 180ml bottle of 48% ABV peated Yamazaki goes!
Yamazaki Distillery Exclusive, NAS, 48% ABV. Yamazaki, Japan.
Distilled from peated malt, matured in Spanish oak casks. 180ml bottle, 2024. Non-chill filtered, unknown colouring but likely natural.
Colour: Dark bronze.
Nose: Oaky, spicy, fruity. Spicy oak (cinnamon, clove, etc), black tea, buttery pie crust pastry, loads of dried fruit - currants, raisins, bitter orange peel, plums. Soft earthy peat underneath. Burnt toffee, leather, dark chocolate syrup. A little rancio as well, with roasted nuts, dried mushrooms, forest floor. Touch of spent coffee grounds.
Texture: Medium weight. Oaky, peaty, syrupy, slightly astringent. No heat at all.
Taste: Peatier here than on the nose, an earthy dry peat, Ardmore or Benromach level maybe. Leather, dried mushrooms, spicy oak, leather, bitter orange peel. Ashy peat smoke comes through with more roasted nuts, buttery pie crust pastry, currants & raisins, touch of aniseed.
Finish: Medium length. Earthy peat & forest floor, bitter orange peel, burnt toffee, dark chocolate syrup. Touch of Vietnamese coffee, more currants & plums, roasted nuts, cinnamon & cloves. Slight touches of sandalwood, ginger, and aniseed around the edges.
Score: 3.5 out of 5.
Notes: Very tasty dessert dram, without being overly sweet. Something like an over-spiced rich Christmas mince pie with extra orange peel & dark chocolate sauce poured over the top, but then with earthy peat in there somehow... Sounds strange, but I'd eat it! The Spanish oak & sherry influences are very prominent, but they're balanced out a little with that earthy peat - strong sherry casks can easily overwhelm peat influence in anything short of Laphroaig, but that hasn't been allowed to happen in this peated Yamazaki. This is a very easy-drinking whisky even with that heavy cask influence, still refined in the typical Japanese style, but far less-so than in most Yamazaki that I've tasted to date. That's probably down to the peat, which is a very rare thing in Yamazaki as it is, even more so combined when with sherry casks!
Given the quality of this dram and the rarity of this style of Yamazaki, I'm more-than happy with the value for money here since I picked it up at the distillery for that $37 AUD. But for the love of God do not pay the ridiculous secondary prices that some "retailers" are asking (some over $300 AUD for 180ml, which is laughable). This is a 180ml bottle at 48% ABV which is meant to be a liquid souvenir or keepsake, not a flippable commodity. It's a shame that many people see all Japanese whisky as the latter, but with any luck that'll be slowing down in the current market - it certainly has locally and will probably continue to do so. Fingers crossed!
Cheers!
