Yummers-zaki: Yamazaki 18 Year Old review

With so many amazing Japanese whiskies on the market, we thought we’d review one of our favourites – the Yamazaki 18 Year Old, a whisky from the more thickly sherried, savoury school of Japanese malts.

A little about Yamazaki Distillery…

Yamazaki was Japan’s first whisky distillery and it was built by Suntory’s founder, Shinjiro Torii, in 1923. In Japan, there are only two major players in whisky: Suntory and Nikka. Between them, they control almost every distillery in the country.

Because of this, there is no trading of malt and grain whisky between companies (as is the practice in Scotland’s whisky blending industry). Distilleries must be as self-contained as possible, so Yamazaki houses a whopping 12 stills of different types and configurations, allowing the distillery to produce a range of whiskies.

When Yamazaki released the 12 Year Old single malt in 1984 it was the first mass-marketed whisky of its type in Japan and, after an initial struggle on the global scene, Japanese malts have become incredibly popular. Distilleries like Yamazaki and Nikka’s Yoichi have challenged the Scotch distillers at their own game.

The star of the show: Yamazaki 18 Year Old

The 18 Year Old is a real tour de force for the distillery. The single malt was first launched in 1992 and has been really well-received by critics over the years. It was Whisky Magazine Recommended, Best Japanese Single Malt at the World Whiskies Awards countless times, and scored an incredible six consecutive double gold medals at the San Francisco Spirits Competition from 2008 to 2013. 

In 2006, under the guidance of third-generation master blender Shingo Torii, Yamazaki’s whisky production transitioned to utilizing smaller pot stills. The distillery saw an expansion in 2013, with the addition of four new stills, and later, another four. Yamazaki upholds a versatile production approach, offering the choice between wooden and stainless steel washbacks for fermentation, a selection of 16 pot stills of differing shapes and styles for distillation, and a wide range of casks for ageing. This flexibility enables the production of whiskies with diverse flavour profiles, an advantage for blending purposes. As Suntory and Nikka, the largest distillery owners in Japan, have a minimal exchange between them, this versatility is particularly valuable.

Yamazaki 18 Year Old is bottled at 43% ABV. Around 80% of the liquid is matured in sherry butts, while the remaining whisky spent its years in American as well as the rare and expensive Mizunara Japanese oak casks.

Let’s see how it tastes…

Yamazaki 18 Year Old tasting note:

Nose: Pot still rum and walnut kicking things off… Develops with sublime whiffs of musty sherry, apple peels and a hint of sooty smoke. Such thickness; like a dollop of treacle. Then soot and pear drops, maybe even the faintest suggestion of rancio after a time.

Palate: Syrupy, and rich, the rum/cola sweetness is quickly counteracted by increasingly dry, tannic sherrywood. Sloes and damsons proffer more mouth-puckering tanginess. Altogether it’s rather savoury, herbal even, with a touch of peat.

Finish: Medium, plenty of raw ginger for both heat and flavour. Earthy and woody. Lemon pith and cardamom.

Overall: Intense and utterly refined. Water brings out more rancio, but it’s better neat. A fantastic malt, it builds on the orchard fruit style displayed so well in the younger Yamazaki bottlings, with the added dimension of that earthy, savoury complexity. Just… incredible!