Distilled: 2000 - Bottled: 2013 - Bottled for: Isetan department store - ABV: 60.9%
Nose: A complexity of sweet and savory. Black forest cake, fried mushrooms in soy sauce, and both sweet and salty licorice. Refined sherry, raspberry tart biscuits, chocolate rum balls, and Vegemite. Very clean given the abv. Water adds orange sherbet candy and tangy orange (vitamin C tablet). Then there is fragrant rubber bands in the distant with coffee liqueur: Kahlua? Quite meaty on the last leg.
Taste: Prune sherry and Vegemite. Again quite smooth with cinnamon gum, spicey and sweet chutney, fragrant rubber, and black bean sauce. Past this you get Dr.Pepper, black cherry and dark bitter chocolate. Water allows a nice mocha attribute to surface along with mild licorice and bitter peel.
Finish: Gingered burdock, walnuts, and burnt black cherry then, black bean sauce.
Comment: No hype involved - a stellar cask, this young Karuizawa puts most of the older expressions I have tried to shame (mind you I haven't tried many). I'll go out on a whim and say this is my one of my second favourite "young" Karuizawa's. The first being Memories of Karuizawa 13yo. Another one of those "I wish I had a second bottle". Great play between savory and sweet, well balanced and complex.
I was not surprised to read your glowing review, Clint. Some of the (admittedly few) 12- or 15-year old Karuizawa expressions that I tried at bars in Japan easily trumped certain 30-year old single cask bottlings. This tasting experience sounds truly gorgeous. For sure I would not have detected the Vegemite - :-) - but many of the flavours mentioned by you are those that I would associate with a great sherried single malt. Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words Pierre. I must be honest this is really the first, or maybe second whisky that I've associated the smell and taste with Vegemite. I grew up on this like many Australians from an infant, so I know what is smells and tastes like. I still eat it to this day when it's available. So you can imagine how surprised (or perhaps excited) to get this aroma and flavour profile. The Vegemite is not dominate but it is ever so present. Perhaps I'll let you see for your self ;)
DeleteHmm, yes, Clint, I think that would be a good idea... I mean to let me see for myself!
ReplyDeleteSounds like a bottle I'd really like. But an Isetan bottling? I suppose it'd be sold out by now?
ReplyDeleteHi Andy, yes it was bottled for the Shinjuku Isetan department store. Along with "Brillant Sherry", "Rare Vintage", and "The Last Bottling" (along with Ichiro's malt&grain). Unfortunately these were not available at any other Isetan, and I presume they are all long gone. When I visited a few months ago the "Brillant Sherry" was still there...again a while ago. Lovely Zawa indeed, of you can get a bottle outside of the resale market do not hesitate. I wish I had another put away for down the track. Sometimes I get two of something and wished I only got one, this time the opposite, I wished I got two bottles.
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