159.1 Zen and the art of tiramisu (ballot bottling)

Description

There is absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind about this cask. This is Cask 159.1 – it is a Japanese whisky from a new distillery code for the Society and we are hugely lucky to be able to get the .1 here in Australia (an honour that would generally have been reserved for the Japan branch). This bottle was launched during an Omakase dinner in Sydney last month to much praise and we’re super excited to be able to launch it here in April Outturn. Due to the limited local outturn of this bottling, it will be available exclusively through a ballot, which you can enter using the QR code above.

Smoke from smouldering coconut shells wafted through the branches of oak trees, bringing light notes of tobacco and leather. With a few drops of water from the bubbling spring, layers of sticky jam between vanilla sponge cake beckoned sweet butterscotch, while chocolate-coated nuts danced with tiramisu in an old coal skuttle. This whisky has had a slightly unconventional story. In early January 2020, 13 casks of whisky distilled at Shinshu distillery in July 2017 were vatted together. Among them, four were new American white oak heavily toasted hogsheads, each able to host approximately 250 litres of whisky, and nine were former bourbon barrels with a capacity of about 200 litres each. On the 11 January 2020, this single malt was used to fill new casks, including this refill American oak heavily toasted hogshead, which hosted the whisky for just over three years before being sent to Scotland in the summer of 2023.