Karuizawa 12 Year Old Cask 166 bottled 2013 Sea Dragon 2000 700ml

Tasted: Oct 26, 2011
Colour: amber.
Nose: This one is curiously coastal at first nosing, a tad briny. Also some fresh butter and mocha, leaves, hay… Wonderful sherry here.
Mouth: Creamy, rich sherry monster. Many jams, spices and herbs plus tobacco and leather.
Finish: Long, tarry. Roasted chestnuts and raspberry jelly, then green tea.
Comments: more sherry than in the previous one but the same high quality. Very big whisky.

Karuizawa is one of the legendary whisky distilleries in Japan. It was founded in 1955 and situated on a beautiful vineyard in Asama of Karuizawa where is also a famous summer palace to Japanese.
Karuizawa is the smallest distillery in Japanese but its ambition is big. Karuizawa adopted the top standard in making of whisky. It used the famous barley Golden Promise, distilled in small batch and aged their spirit in finest Spanish sherry casks that made Karuizawa malt perfection in quality.
Although all these uncompromising principles made Karuizawa malt the masterpiece, it was irony that its persistence was unsustainable commercially at that time as the market was not ready to accept such a premium Japanese malt. Karuizawa distillery was stopped production in 2000 and completely closed in 2011.
Karuizawa’s old stocks are now the most precious and rarest Japanese malt ever existing in the market. It is foreseeable that Karuizawa malt, such a great, rare and classic but diminishing whisky will definitely becoming the treasures exclusively for the rich very soon.