COCKTAILS & SPIRITS met ISAAC DrankCast
THE SUNTORY SPECIAL PART 1(with LAURA BRADY)
Get ready to embark on an unforgettable journey through the world of whisky with the delightful Laura Brady, brand ambassador for House of SUNTORY.
Revel in the rich history of House of SUNTORY as we commemorate its 100-year anniversary and marvel at their fascinating distilleries in Japan.
Discover the artistry behind Suntory Whisky's method of capturing the delicate and complex flavors of Japan and savor the tantalizing notes of their revered Yamazaki 12-year-old whisky and the exclusive 18-year-old.
As we delve deeper into the whisky world, we explore the vital role of Mizunara, a rare Japanese oak, in the aging process. Immerse yourself in the delicious nuances and distinctive qualities Mizunara imparts on Yamazaki whiskeys.
So pour yourself a dram and join us on this enlightening whisky adventure.
Link:
LIKE US , LOVE US
#cocktails #spirits #drank #bartender #educatie #horeca #sterkeverhalen #ISAAC #COLLINS
VOLG ONS OP INSTA:
COCKTAILS&SPIRITS MET ISAAC
ISAAC ACADEMY
COLLINS BARSYSTEMS
MISJA VORSTERMANS
Get ready to embark on an unforgettable journey through the world of whisky with the delightful Laura Brady, brand ambassador for House of SUNTORY.
Revel in the rich history of House of SUNTORY as we commemorate its 100-year anniversary and marvel at their fascinating distilleries in Japan.
Discover the artistry behind Suntory Whisky's method of capturing the delicate and complex flavors of Japan and savor the tantalizing notes of their revered Yamazaki 12-year-old whisky and the exclusive 18-year-old.
As we delve deeper into the whisky world, we explore the vital role of Mizunara, a rare Japanese oak, in the aging process. Immerse yourself in the delicious nuances and distinctive qualities Mizunara imparts on Yamazaki whiskeys.
So pour yourself a dram and join us on this enlightening whisky adventure.
Link:
LIKE US , LOVE US
#cocktails #spirits #drank #bartender #educatie #horeca #sterkeverhalen #ISAAC #COLLINS
VOLG ONS OP INSTA:
COCKTAILS&SPIRITS MET ISAAC
ISAAC ACADEMY
COLLINS BARSYSTEMS
MISJA VORSTERMANS
Welcome to the weekly podcast about spirits, cocktails and cocktail culture. This week in English, part one of the Suntory special. The boys get a masterclass on Centauri from the most charming brand ambassador in the Netherlands, Laura Brady. The reason why House of Centauri celebrates their 100-year anniversary and because the boys had so much to ask and Laura brought so many amazing whiskies to taste, they went massively overtime. So this is the first two part in the history of the podcast. Get comfortable, pour yourself a Yamazaki whiskey and enjoy part one of the special. This is season 3, episode 114 of cocktails and spirits with Isaac. Yeah.
FJALAR:We're back in English.
MISJA:In English, yes, yes, we have to speak the foreign language, but that's what we do. We speak.
FJALAR:English we speak.
MISJA:Spanish.
FJALAR:we speak Italian, my bbd bo, I speak the language of love, alright, so.
MISJA:And we have two guests that we will introduce a little bit later. Where are you?
FJALAR:actually.
MISJA:My name is Michi Fosmans, I'm the owner of Isaac and you're the owner as well.
FJALAR:Yeah, and the owner of Collins Bar Systems, and we're very creative with Isaac.
MISJA:Creative.
JOHN:Yeah.
MISJA:And we have this podcast about cocktails, spirits, cocktail culture. We're going to taste some amazing drinks. Oh yeah, I'm going to try some of their drinks. So a bottle full of shiw in English, a bottle full of shiw how to trace that? Full of bombs, I don't know. But yeah, we're going to drink some amazing 18 year old whiskeys from Japan. I cannot wait. So let's start, let's do it.
FJALAR:Alrighty, welcome to the show.
MISJA:Yeah.
FJALAR:Laura Brady yeah.
MISJA:So please introduce yourself for our listeners. Who are you? Why are you here? What's the whole idea behind?
LAURA BRADY:this show.
MISJA:Don't be shy.
LAURA BRADY:Not at all. So hello, my name is Laura Brady. I am the brand ambassador, based in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, for the House of Santori, so I started this role about a year ago. Yeah, and very exciting, because it's been a very huge year for Santori we're celebrating the 100 year anniversary. Yeah, the planning of our first distillery, japan's first distillery, and we get to talk about that today and taste some very, very wonderful drums.
MISJA:Yeah, along with that, seen them already. Oh yeah, the House of Santori has some amazing brands in their portfolio, so they brought some of them and you brought a friend.
LAURA BRADY:I did. I have one of my colleagues here with me today.
JOHN:Introduce yourself. Thank you for having us guys. My name is John and I'm the brand manager of House of Santori here in the Netherlands. I work for the Kuiper and I came here to appreciate a little bit of whiskeys and have fun with you guys.
MISJA:You saw what we're going to taste in the lineup so I thought I'm going to take a long bit to try, I'm going, I'm going. Hard job, so welcome. Let's start at the beginning. We always ask ourselves, but also our guests is there something that you noticed about last week, fjallard? Will you kick it off?
FJALAR:I got two things. Matthew Perry, what the hell.
MISJA:But is Matthew Perry from France.
FJALAR:I'm going to talk later about him and the Horecava Innovation Awards. That was yesterday, okay.
MISJA:Laura, is there something you noticed last week, maybe in your inbox, in your email?
LAURA BRADY:I got some very exciting news last week, so next year I'm going to be going on another trip back to Japan.
FJALAR:Oh, jealous man. It's such a bucket list thing, man, I want to go.
LAURA BRADY:That is the news that you want to have to close.
FJALAR:Yeah, when are you going to go?
LAURA BRADY:I'm going to be going in February. We're going to go to visit both of our distilleries. Obviously a lot of education around that, but it's exciting because we have just done a lot of refurbishment.
FJALAR:We've put in a lot of funding to make some exciting changes, but both distilleries are actually a part of renovation. Now right, that's right.
LAURA BRADY:The idea was actually to have these done before the 100 years, but of course COVID through all of that out of motion, so now they are officially up and running.
FJALAR:Is it cold in February in Japan?
LAURA BRADY:It is cold Shall we start a long podcast.
MISJA:We'll get into that.
LAURA BRADY:I'm going back to Japan. That's my great news.
JOHN:I heard I am not going to Japan. That was a tough one to swallow Last week. Entry awards.
FJALAR:Oh, that's, very much, yeah, definitely.
MISJA:We were there with.
JOHN:Laura.
MISJA:Did you ever went there before?
JOHN:A few times already.
MISJA:Okay, what do you like?
JOHN:this edition. This edition better than the one from last year. Okay, that's just.
MISJA:Yeah. I thought so too, and I noticed that there are again a lot of celebrity spirits coming onto the market. Yes, there's a little bit of our guilty pleasure in the show.
FJALAR:It's a returning subject.
MISJA:Yeah, we'll talk about that a little bit later on. Now I have to find this one.
FJALAR:I've got information, man. New shit has come to light, new shit News. Information from which movie that is and who that was.
LAURA BRADY:I do not. Can you play it again? You're young.
FJALAR:I've got information, man. New shit has come to light. John, do you know Paul Fincher? No, no, no it's called Dude in that movie and he was drinking a cocation. Do you know what drink we refer to then?
LAURA BRADY:Is it something out of a coconut?
FJALAR:No, it's a white Russian.
MISJA:Oh yeah. So, this was from a very famous movie, yeah.
FJALAR:What was it again you?
MISJA:know it's a quiz question, we're gonna go back to the later. People can think about it, but we got new shit, yeah, new shit. So news First of all. Last week we had a cliffhanger because Nick Freelink was still doing his competition in Rome for the World Championship?
FJALAR:Yeah, exactly.
MISJA:And we didn't know if he would win the final round. So he would become World.
FJALAR:Champion. He was waiting with 15 bartenders somewhere getting drunk. The tension was growing. And then finally.
MISJA:Yeah, from those 15 he won his categories. So he became Gold Medalist. So he won his round, so that was amazing already For the pre-dinner category, yeah, and then from those five categories there's like one World Champion, and Nick didn't make that so, but he was like with the five best bartenders of the final five of this competition, his drink became one of the best drinks in the world.
MISJA:So he, yeah, so that was amazing. So congratulations for it. Yeah, Alrighty Nick. If you want to see Nick in action, he works at Fitzbarg Pillows Hotel Amsterdam.
FJALAR:What's the name of the drink? Do you know?
MISJA:The amazing golden? Ok, he doesn't know.
FJALAR:Nick needs to come over and make it for us, yeah.
MISJA:So celebrity spirits, matthew McConaughey.
JOHN:Hey, hey, mcconaughey.
MISJA:McConaughey All right, all right, all right. He has a tequila on the market, of course, and it's called pantalones, which means trousers Of a brook in the Netherlands.
JOHN:A bit Spanish, yeah, exactly.
MISJA:Yeah, he wants to put the fun back into tequila. I said what happened to tequila? It became too serious. And in his YouTube video you see him riding a motorbike half naked with no pantalones.
FJALAR:He's always naked in every movie.
MISJA:But now he's got his shirt on and his pantalones off.
FJALAR:So, a big change from.
MISJA:Matthew and then Michael Buble. It's.
FJALAR:Christmas time. Yeah, it's Christmas time.
MISJA:He comes out with a whiskey Fraser and Thompson whiskey blended by the Heaven Hill distillery, but it's a mix of Canadian whiskey and bourbon whiskey. Oh really, which makes it a North American whiskey. So yeah, a blend.
FJALAR:Yeah, there's a. You can do a lot of things then with the whiskey in terms of a legislation.
MISJA:Yeah, OK, cool, the world was waiting for another whiskey, but research in the US tells us that consumer pays about 73% more for a celebrity spirit than any other spirit 73% more retail price. So that's why everybody's jumping in. If you look at the top 50 celebrity brands, half of them are all tequila brands.
FJALAR:So yeah it's leading the package, probably the espresso guy the Nespresso guy.
MISJA:Are you good in names now?
FJALAR:Well what's his name again? George Clooney? Yeah, exactly.
JOHN:George.
MISJA:George, he's the winner. So, yeah, ok. So that's what's my news. Do you have any news?
FJALAR:No, no, no information. No, I don't, because I want to skip that whole thing and I want to go into the Japanese whiskey category. That's the reason why I don't have any news, all right.
MISJA:So, yeah, let's get to the good stuff. 100 years celebration for the House of Centauri. That's a long time, 100 years.
LAURA BRADY:It is. It's a long time for whiskey in Japan. It's been a really exciting time. I was lucky, so lucky, to get to be involved this year, to see what we've done around the world. It's been amazing, so I think we should jump in. I was. We were chatting briefly before about Japanese whiskey as a category.
JOHN:Yeah.
LAURA BRADY:So maybe for the listeners we should dive into that a little bit?
MISJA:Definitely, definitely. So what makes a whiskey a Japanese whiskey?
LAURA BRADY:Good question. What I want to go with you through first is what, for us, defines Centauri whiskey. So one of the questions I work a lot with the bartenders, our hospitality community and having that question of what is different about a Japanese whiskey. So this was a game that actually our global brand advocate, James Bowker. He introduced me to this and I thought it was a lot of fun and it's really great for people that are listening to get an idea of what it is we're going to talk about when we taste these whiskies today.
JOHN:Yeah.
LAURA BRADY:So I'm going to ask you a question.
FJALAR:Oh man, it's quiz time already.
JOHN:I'm scared. Yeah, let's do it. And.
LAURA BRADY:John's going to be quiet for this song because he'll already know. Ok, so I'm going to define a flavor palette. So if I asked you to go over to Scotland and give me a stereotypical food from Scotland, what would you say?
MISJA:Haggis.
LAURA BRADY:Yes, I'll say it, yeah, I would say Haggis as well. Amazing. Ok, let's go over to America. Stereotypical food from America.
MISJA:Burgers, burgers barbecue.
LAURA BRADY:Yeah, yeah, yes.
JOHN:Great.
MISJA:Mac and cheese.
JOHN:Yeah.
FJALAR:Stuff with a lot of grease in it. That's it, just a little bit.
LAURA BRADY:That's it. Ok, now come over with me to Japan.
MISJA:What would you?
LAURA BRADY:give me a stereotypical food.
MISJA:Sushi, ramen and sushi, yeah, yeah.
LAURA BRADY:Yeah, OK, great. So if we use this to talk about a flavor profile, a palette, if you think of something like Haggis in Scotland, we're talking about really punchy, bold, strong flavors. It's really really powerful. So then, if we look at their main category, especially their single malts, we're often talking about very, very powerful whiskies. That's even when we're taking away peat or smoky components. We still have these whiskies that have a lot of body, a lot of strength, a lot of palette and they really occasionally might fight your mouth.
FJALAR:Yeah, definitely yeah.
LAURA BRADY:So it makes sense that you can expect that with your scotch. If I take you over to America and you gave me something like burgers, they like these fatty, oily foods, but also they like a lot of sweetness. If you think of something like burgers, you usually have sauces, dips, relishes, all of these sweetening components as well. So then, if we look at their biggest category being bourbons, it makes sense that you can expect that richer, sweeter style of whisky. So if we go over to Japan and you gave something like sushi, even ramen, we're talking about flavors that have complexities, but they're often more delicate in terms of complexities. So they say, when you get to the highest grade of sushi chef, that everybody is getting the most premium fish. Everybody has the absolute best knives, they're all sharpened appropriately every single day and they all follow a very strict way of cutting. So if their technique is all the same and if their produce is all the absolute best, what can they do to make changes to be the absolute best chef? It's how they season their rice. So it's these really small, very intricate changes that make, to Japanese people, quite a large difference. But if we talk about that as a palate, we're talking about something that is much more subtle, that is much more refined, but you're still searching for complexities. So this is really the flavor profile that we define our centauri whiskies with it's subtle and it's refined, yet it's complex. So this is what really draws it away from these other big spirit categories of the world. That's what we're trying to achieve. It's this Japanese palate.
LAURA BRADY:So what's really important with our founder, shinjiro Tori? His dream it was very much to create a whisky, because this was one of his, let's say, first big loves of Western-style spirits, but to have one that was fully Japanese, so to be made in Japan, inspired by Japan and Japanese nature, made by Japanese people, and that was made first of all for Japanese people. So that's why we wanted to represent that palate. So the name itself, centauri it's a compound word If you break it down. Tori is the family name from Shinjiro Tori, our founding father, and sun is referencing land of the rising sun, so it means Japan. So Japan is coming before that family name. The greatest thing you can do is to give something back to your country. So that's really the big difference that we talk about with centauri whisky.
JOHN:Oh right, and it's also spelled backwards yeah, yeah centauri sun, laura sun.
FJALAR:OK nice, but then OK, I can totally understand this. How do you call it in English, this metaphors Meta?
JOHN:meta meta, meta, meta meta.
FJALAR:But how do you? Is there a way of? In the production wise, is there a difference how you accomplish these kind of flavors, this more delicate kind of flavor?
LAURA BRADY:Yeah, there, absolutely is. So I think we should do this with our at least our first round.
MISJA:But which one do you want to face first? So we're going to first of all taste our Yamazaki 12-year-old.
LAURA BRADY:I'm going to pass this round to everyone, or I think John's on the whiskeys. John is what I'm here for.
JOHN:I only came for this Good job, John yeah.
LAURA BRADY:So there is what we had, the sort of.
JOHN:All right yeah.
LAURA BRADY:What we were, what we have the sort of luxury of, in that we've started making whiskey 100 years ago. We found it, the Amazaki Distillery in 1923. And it does mean that we have this ability to look at chemistry and to have this sort of greater understanding and knowledge of chemistry. So when we look about whiskey production around the rest of the world, it most likely started in the UK and we're talking between the 13th and 15th century. So a lot of the things that happened with whiskey production were happy accidents that became eventually world-class wonderful spirits that we talk about today.
LAURA BRADY:But at Heise of Centauri we were really able, after we started, after we initially kind of settled on a distillery looking at the future of whiskey production, we were able to look at this understanding of chemistry, to make changes in the whiskey process so that we could really work on that complexity, work on having these different styles of whiskey, and there was a big reason that we needed to do that. So if we go back 80 years ago and you look at Scotland, for you guys, I'm sure you have the answer to this. But our readers, our listeners unless Misha's gonna transcript this tomorrow- I will.
MISJA:I will, if you want me to do it. I will make it into a booklet.
LAURA BRADY:Our listeners work at home. I'll ask this question so that you can just answer it yourselves. But what do you think was the biggest category of scotch whiskey If we go back 80 years? Was it blended or was it single malts?
JOHN:Blended.
MISJA:I would go for single malt. I would think.
LAURA BRADY:Final answer.
MISJA:Blended.
JOHN:Blended.
LAURA BRADY:It was blended. It was blended whiskeys, and the reason for that just being that in Scotland you can trade between distilleries, so it's very, very common that you buy whiskies from multiple distilleries. You bring these together to create a blend, and a lot of the time then we were talking about something that was often better in terms of profile, in terms of taste, than the sum of those individual parts, so you could maintain consistency and you could have a whiskey that you felt was really wonderful. So when we started at Heiser Centauri to compete with the rest of the world, we were really looking at blended whiskey as being the king, but we were the first producers of what was truly whisky, truly Japanese whisky.
FJALAR:So you had nobody to trade with.
LAURA BRADY:Precisely, and even today you don't see this trading between distilleries happen in Japan. So if you want to create something that's really complex and that's very different, you have to find a way to do that within one distillery.
MISJA:Oh wait, sorry to interrupt, but we watched some of the movies and we saw all the different skills next to each other. Is that one of the reasons why? Because?
LAURA BRADY:we were wondering yeah, yeah, so this is a method that we employ in Japan. It's called Sukirowake.
FJALAR:Sukirowake.
JOHN:Yes, this one means, you should write down.
LAURA BRADY:So Sukirowake, if I translate it very easily, it sort of means diversity in production. So this is something that we employ at all of the steps of the whisky making process so that we can make as many different styles of whiskey as possible.
FJALAR:Now, one of the things that I what would be nice to. Maybe you can explain this, or it's coming what is actually if you have a high steel or a small steel? What is the effect on the spirit? What does it do?
LAURA BRADY:Yeah, it's huge. It's a very different effect. It also depends at what point, what you've done to the whisky before it even gets to that point, let's say. So I'll explain this now with Sukirowake, so all of the steps of the whisky making process, there's lots of different elements that you can change. So, of course, if we're talking about Yamazaki, which we're tasting now, we have the 12 year old. So when we are creating this 12 year old, we're loosely following what is those Scottish regulations, in that the youngest whisky in that bottle is 12 years old. It's nothing below that age.
LAURA BRADY:However, to create complexity, to get those really interesting sort of these different notes that are gonna jump out at you, this is how we're employing Sukirowake and we're actually using many different component whiskies from the Yamazaki distillery to create that 12 year old. So what I mean is, originally, you'll start with your mash. You'll go through fermentation. So one thing that we do at Yamazaki, we have a really clear wart, because we feel like the clearness of that wart is really gonna impact then for our fermentation. So we always have a very, very clear wart. This was one thing that we learned through trial and error at one of our test labs, which we have at Yamazaki.
FJALAR:So you're washing actually your grains. Is that one of the things how you do it?
LAURA BRADY:Yeah, so after the barley has been malted then it goes into that mash and then we're basically we're filtering out any of those sort of like heavy, cloudy components so that the wart that we use for fermentation is very, very clear. And this is so you can get like a lot of these bright, very estuary notes. It's quite an exciting way to sort of play around with flavors already. So then we're going to go into fermentation. Now you know this from American whiskey. Fermentation is something that you can have a lot of fun with when it comes to yeast, and of course in Japan there wasn't any regulations around whiskey making. So we were able to look at these other big whiskey producers to sort of learn from those masters, look at different processes and see how we can apply those to create changes in our whiskey. So at Yamazaki we actually have started to cultivate our own yeasts.
LAURA BRADY:Alright cool, and there's 200 varieties of yeast that have been successfully propagated that you can use. Now that's not to say that we use 200 styles, but this is just an example of sukiro-wakene.
FJALAR:I mean for the American guys. It's common for them to use quite a lot of different yeast strains, exactly, but 200 is a lot, that's a lot.
LAURA BRADY:And the reason that the Americans do this is because the regulations around aging are so strict. So, in order to still formulate something, a signature style, or to go for something that's a little bit different, a little bit out there, that was one thing that they found playing with this could have a big impact on your whiskey. So that's something that Haise Suntory then took on board. So we do propagate our own yeasts, Then fermentation this will depend. We do different lengths of fermentation for different styles of whiskies that we want to achieve and then, of course, we take it into the distilling.
LAURA BRADY:So this is where it gets very fun. If you walk down, for example, the LeFroy distilling hall, you will see that they have their wash still and their spirit still and they have the exact same shape and size. And there's an obvious reason for that. It's because you have a signature style of whiskey and you want to produce a signature style of whiskey. So what you have in that distilling process is always maintaining what is your signature style. So all of that new make that comes off of that still, it has that signature style. And then usually those playful elements. They often come in the aging process. Of course there's exceptions to this, but I'm giving you this sort of example, and then what we do at Haise Suntory.
LAURA BRADY:If you go down the Yamazaki distilling hall, we have eight pairs, so 16 stills in total, but each one of these stills are a completely different shape and size. So I know you said you Googled it or you saw these, but they really are and they make huge differences. And this is a lot of chemistry. It's a lot about reflux and what sort of different compounds can make it through distillation. But what's important to know is that if you have a certain mash and you send it through one set of still, you can expect that you'll go for these more fruity or more floral aromas. If you send it through another set, you might be going for those more caramel sort of toffee notes. So this is to simplify it, but they make a huge difference. Distilling really is going to sort of structure, what that whiskey is going to take in terms of shape.
MISJA:For someone from this if you talk about difference in the, still still can be wider or higher, but also the line arm can be different angles, so the reflux you can adjust to that. And we saw that like the four next to each other, they were all four different ones the line arms, the wide, the length, exactly.
LAURA BRADY:And then there's also these other components that then you can look at. That will make difference. So back in that fermentation you can use stainless steel washbacks, which will give you that more sort of bright, sort of fruity, those lighter esters again. Or you can use wooden washbacks, and wooden washbacks encourage that lactobacteria. So if you think of your dairy products like creams, milks, you're thinking of this rich sort of creamy, textured. Note Same happens in fermentation. So we use both. At Yamazaki we have stainless steel and we have wooden washbacks. And then with those stills themselves we also use direct fire in some of those stills. So that gives you that Maliard reaction. It gives you those like like all again, that sort of caramel richness.
JOHN:Yeah.
LAURA BRADY:So there's lots of these steps that you can play with along the way, and we're just talking about now a new make. So this is before we even go into the aging processes.
FJALAR:Yeah, it's funny because I think a lot of listeners now they have no clue what you were saying, like 20 minutes, but that's cool, but it's really not. So one of the things that I was curious about so when, when a lot of think, a lot of people were thinking OK, when whiskey is being made, you have a fermentation process, then alcohol is being produced by the interaction of yeast and sugar, then alcohol is being made, then you're going to distill it in a still and then it's just one, maybe OK, it's two stills, washed still and spirit still, and then it goes into a barrel. That's, that's like a general. But now you're saying actually, so the whiskies that that Yamazaki is making is not two stills, but actually sometimes it can happen that maybe 16 stills are being incorporated in a single malt. Is that? Is that?
LAURA BRADY:No. So I think the easier way to look at this is like a multiplier effect. So, for example, if, at a very, very classic way of making whiskey, you have all of those steps, yeah, so you have where you start with your base ingredient being your barley, and then you create your, your mash. It goes to fermentation. That's another step. And then you have your step of distillation and then you'll have your step of barrels aging. So the cask.
JOHN:Yeah.
LAURA BRADY:So for us it's more like, at each of those steps you can apply a multiplier. So for barley we use two different strands, so that's two different types of whiskey styles already. Then you go to the next step. Okay, so there's in the fermentation, for example, there's I gave you 200.
FJALAR:Yeah.
LAURA BRADY:But we put these into four categories. So four different styles of yeast that create different types of whiskey. So that's two times four. So that's how you go. Then we go into the, the washbacks. We have two different types, so again you could times that four by another two, and then we go into distillation and we have stills at working pairs, but they're all different shapes and sizes. So it's another multiplier effect of eight different styles, depending on which sort of still set you choose to distill that whiskey.
FJALAR:Okay, but so to be clear, so you are using only one still set for one whiskey, or can you? Can you use, let's say, four stills for one whiskey?
LAURA BRADY:No, we distill twice, so we only use two stills. But to make it even more crazy, what we can now do at Yamazaki is usually they would work in pairs that you sort of see run opposite, but now you can also connect your wash still to a different spirit still, so you have even more multipliers but, they're only distilled twice and they're usually coming off this still.
FJALAR:Yeah, I understand that, but can you use two new make spirits from the second distillation and blend them together and then still be called a single malt?
LAURA BRADY:So this is. This is very different, though. This is this is more of this vatted styles of whiskey. So this, this. It's not that you can't do that.
LAURA BRADY:But, when we talk about our Yamazaki 12, that's not something that we're doing. So we're sending that whiskey through a process. Once it's been distilled, it's going to be aged. So we're selecting a cask, we're selecting a location to age that whiskey, and then we'll be testing that cask throughout the years to see how is it aging, how is it doing, and we always, every year, as part of maintaining our core range, we will always put certain whiskey styles into production so that we're, of course, we're keeping that 12 year old as the 12 year old that you're tasting now, but as part of this, we just have a lot of freedom to create many different styles.
MISJA:That's so mean.
LAURA BRADY:So what is different is just that we're really changing so many steps in the whiskey process and it's to create diversity. So that's just the big, big difference. It's so that in one distillery you can have many different styles of whiskey. There's still characteristic of being made within that location, which for me, with the Amazaki maybe you get this, but it's usually you'll find this tropical fruit note will exhibit within all of the different bottlings.
LAURA BRADY:It exhibits itself differently, but usually there's something a little bit tropical at the Amazaki and we think that's a lot to do with the location, with the climate.
FJALAR:OK, is there also because a lot of these, like fruity notes, most of the time come from a lot of well, it can happen from the fermentation process making esters. Is there something that is being created there, or is that more in the aging process, or can you define where it comes from? Is that difficult to this?
LAURA BRADY:is a great question. I mean, this is a great question for whiskey geeks in general, because that's Well, we're on that level now already.
LAURA BRADY:I think that's something that is open for debate very often. I know that if you were to ask the sort of blending team that work at Yamazaki, they would tell you that we do have a signature style at Yamazaki. It does a lot come from that sort of process of making of the whiskey, but also the area in which it is made. So the climate at Yamazaki in the summer it can go over 40 degrees. So it's very very hot.
JOHN:It's hot.
LAURA BRADY:And in the winter we can go as low as four degrees, so it will go very cold, and this is very unlike that sort of temperate Scottish weather. So one thing that we luckily have at Yamazaki is this emergence of three rivers that are coming from very different locations, sort of through the valley, down the mountain, and what that's helping to do is create a lot of humidity. So there's quite a lot of humidity at Yamazaki and if it wasn't for this humidity the aging process it would be too quick.
LAURA BRADY:We would lose a lot, and what we've sort of found is that at Yamazaki we tend to have quite a steep aging, so aging will happen quite quickly, to start but, then it doesn't maintain this steep aging, it softens and then it goes a lot slower. So you really have to have very careful cask management of tasting these whiskeys regularly to see where they're at, how it's progressing. But a lot of the climate, we think, comes into play there and as part of that climate obviously having its own sort of bacterias which it's again arguably, but they impact with the cask aging and we just find that we do have this sort of tendency to find these tropical fruit notes.
MISJA:Tropical sound tropical fruit notes.
LAURA BRADY:Oh right, what do you think of the 12 year olds? We've been sitting in this 12 year old. We have to start over.
MISJA:I forgot the record button. But I am from the timekeeping side of things. So we need to move along to the next sample, the next sample.
LAURA BRADY:Yes, so we just tried the 12 year old and I don't know if you want to shy any tasting notes or what you think about the 12 year old?
FJALAR:On the nose, it's very fresh light and and in the tropical notes Stone fruit, maybe even some mango or these kind of aromas to it.
MISJA:But also some really sweet woody notes on there as well and on the palate it kind of explodes. I mean on the nose I think it's still light and easy, but on the palate it just explodes into all directions.
FJALAR:I think definitely. If you are new to the whiskey category, this is immediately one of these whiskies that you're going to love immediately. It's easy to drink but it has complexity. I mean, your metaphor with the sushi was definitely exactly there, because it's such an easy drinking but very complex whiskey.
JOHN:Really nice, Beautiful thing. It lingers for a very long time.
LAURA BRADY:So really great that you said that, john, because it's going to lead us into this next jam actually, when we talk about that sort of finish. For me, the reason that you have this sort of stretch in the finish with the 12 year old is because we're incorporating this use of Mizunara. So for our listeners, mizunara is a great word. Expensive. Mizunara is Japanese oak, so we will talk about this now with our 100 year edition that I've brought along A Yamazaki, 18 year old Mizunara.
FJALAR:Oh man, I'm looking forward to this one.
LAURA BRADY:I read your email.
MISJA:I thought oh really. Yeah, we had in a previous podcast a lot of questions about Mizunara Because we never tasted it before. So there's this mystical Japanese wood. It's very hard to. There's a lot of legaculations about it. To get proper steves out of the tree, because the tree is all wrongly and wrinkly. So we were really looking forward to this one.
LAURA BRADY:Yes, okay. So I'll explain. First of all with this 12 year old, the Yamazaki. So the youngest whiskey in this bottle is 12 years old and that is the core cask component of this whiskey. So for the 12 year old it's actually based on a punch and cask. So punch and casks are quite larger in size. They're about 480 litres and, to make it sort of simple, they give you this like punch of richness, a little bit more of that American oak style.
LAURA BRADY:Those vanilla notes, a little bit of sweetness, a little bit of stone fruits, and the great thing about a punch and cask is that it's a slower style of aging. Now, that is only the base of that Yamazaki 12 year old. So to create complexity within that bottle, we're also blending in other casks of other ages that have been made in different ways. So the 12 year old it's not a blended whiskey, it's a single malt, but it's blended in terms of it's taking different components from one distillery.
LAURA BRADY:So not everything in that is from a punch and cask, not everything has been made in the same style, and one of the things for me that gives you that lingering sensation is Mizunara. So Mizunara is super unique and the effect that it has on a whiskey is very, very different. So the celebration whiskey that I brought today, our Yamazaki 18 year old Mizunara. What is different with this whiskey? It's 100% Mizunara expression. So again, the youngest whiskey in that bottle is 18 years old and it's from a Mizunara cask, but this bottle is incorporating other Mizunara casks from Yamazaki that are much higher in age statement than that 18 year old.
LAURA BRADY:And again, the importance here is to find this sort of complexity, but also to create this sort of harmony and this balance within a liquid, because at 18 years old a Mizunara, it might have this amazing sort of spicy or very sort of aromatic component, but it might not give you a really long aftertaste or it might not give you a little bit of body. So sometimes you'll miss these other things, and this is why blending is always something that we do is so that you have that full thought of 360 around a whiskey, but you're pulling it from different age statements. So what's special here is that it's 100% Mizunara cask, so we're only tasting something that has been aged within Mizunara wood. So a really beautiful quote I'm going to give you, which is from Shinji Fukuyu, who is our current chief blender and he is the man behind the creation of these whiskies. So our 18 year old, 100 year anniversary releases the reason that we chose to do Mizunara expression is because we're celebrating with this 100 year something that is unique about each of these distilleries. So Yamazaki and Hakushu both being our single malt distilleries, and Yamazaki was where we first started aging with Mizunara, and this was coming out of the Second World War.
LAURA BRADY:Of course, other countries were no longer willing to trade with Japan and to legally make whiskey you have to age in oak. So we had to look for what was Japanese oak. So we turned to Mizunara. No, how it actually started was rocky to say the least. So Mizunara it means water oak. It has this sort of tendency to move like water. So if you're listening at home and you want to Google a Mizunara tree, it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings. It's like it's twisted, it's a mess. But they're also quite sacred. So you can't just choose. I want to cut down this tree, I want to make barrels. It has to be allocated to you by the government.
LAURA BRADY:And a lot of the time, because you sort of have to respect the nature and the spirit of that thing. You find that these tend to go towards either the furniture making industry, where they can make very special crafts for the home. Whiskey was something that was still quite abstract, so deciding to need that for whiskey was. It took a bit of time to convince the government. So the allocation of Mizunara to the whiskey industry in Japan even today, is very, very limited. It's very small percentage.
FJALAR:So, and this took place around the Second World War, just after.
LAURA BRADY:Just after. So we're talking about the late 40s and into the 50s.
FJALAR:And now I mean just in terms of Japan. It's not a huge country, so the woods are not big as well. How many of these barrels, for example, can you get as a distiller? I mean, how rare is the wood?
LAURA BRADY:It's extremely rare. So in terms of how many barrels, it depends because we do our own cupridge of these barrels. And the problem with Mizunara if you Google this tree, you see how it looks this like twisted mess. It's really difficult to actually find that you can make staves straight enough to create barrels. So that's really a bit of a yeah, how lucky are you? How can you manage? But in terms of what we actually produce at Yamazaki, each year it's something around 2% of whiskeys that we produce that are aged in Mizunara. So it's really a small percentage.
LAURA BRADY:So we're talking about something that is very, very special and also something that took a long time for us to realize was fantastic. So when we started with Mizunara and we put those sort of barrels into production so already you can imagine the price point was quite high because, it's very difficult to get these. I don't know if you know, maybe, how much an ex-burban barrel would cost if you wanted to buy one.
FJALAR:I mean a cheap one is like a hundred bucks.
LAURA BRADY:Yes, yes, you're right. And then a better.
FJALAR:One is like four four hundred.
LAURA BRADY:Yeah, you're right. And then yeah, but so Mizunara for a cask you're looking at anywhere over 5000 euros. So, we're talking about a much, much higher price point.
FJALAR:So that's only the wood? Exactly, without any liquid. Exactly, yeah.
LAURA BRADY:So then you've managed, you've found, you've been given the tree, you've managed to do some coobridge and to create a barrel and you've put the whisky into that barrel. Then what we found is that after five years the impact that it had was actually not palatable. It wasn't enjoyable. This was not a nice expressive whisky. After 10 years it went more into that sweeter, richer profile, but more of what you can get from an ex-burban cask after three years and it's taken us 10.
LAURA BRADY:So we actually decided to stop producing, like stop, sort of putting more and more whisky into Mizunara because we thought that it was not having a positive impact on the whiskies. But we came back to some of these barrels in the 60s and then what we found is that after 15 years, but more expressively from 18 years upwards, what you see with Mizunara is you get this amazing incense note. So it has this sort of spicy, long, incense-y finish and that sort of notes like cedar wood, sandal wood. You see them a lot in sort of men's perfumes, like this more kind of exotic incense notes. So that was what you can actually get from Mizunara, but it's something that's very difficult to work with.
LAURA BRADY:So it means water oak Mizu is water and they have these tendency to move it like moves, like water. So if you haven't had really careful cask management you could come back to this whisky and you've lost everything, yeah.
LAURA BRADY:So it's something that's really difficult to work with and it's something that at Yamazaki we're extremely proud of. We're really proud of that process of sort of understanding and having that patience to really work with Mizunara and see how it expresses throughout the years. You'll find that when we use Mizunara it does feature in the 12. So that was that length that for me comes in the 12. That we don't use anything that's younger than 18. So 18 is that sort of perfect expression for us of that unique Mizunara profile and we don't go anything younger.
MISJA:Yes, it's really like. I mean I really get the incense. That something, I mean, brings back memories. I have all the sisters who always had incense on, so that I recognize. But it's also like a very rich fruity, very ripe, like cherry almost, and it's not just the spicy but it's also the really rich fruity side.
LAURA BRADY:Yeah, yeah, I agree, it's quite amazing.
MISJA:It may be a very Dutch question, laura, but expensive wood, 18 years, japan, how much is a bottle? I mean, can you even get them, because you don't have a lot of them?
LAURA BRADY:It's still 100 years, we don't have a lot of them, so they are limited editions and they're both celebrating something unique about the distilleries. So Yamazaki it is, mizunara and Haku-shu will come to that next. But we do have them and of course part of my role is very much to support our hospitality industry, so to see as many of these bottles on shelves as possible so that it's really something that is more attainable for people to taste. Of course it comes at a higher price point, but we do, and they're sold directly through a couple of our partners here in Amsterdam, especially Tonne Overmast, for example and.
LAURA BRADY:Canaan Grain you can find both of these bottles the exact price points on those. They're over 2,000.
LAURA BRADY:I will say that I think actually they might just be below for Gemiseki over 2,000. I think, yeah, yeah, haku-shu below, yeah, but they but we do still have bottles in the Netherlands and that's really that's more part of what my role is now for Huiso Centauri is securing more of these bottles for our market and making sure that where they go they're fully accessible and that you can have that sort of bit of knowledge with them as well. So if you do get any questions from consumers that are interested, that want to taste, you really know where to direct people. Because if Japanese whiskey is something that you're really interested in, you want to taste it, taste it, but it's also maybe at a higher price point than something that feels more accessible, then you want to know that you've been directed in the right kind of way, based on what you think your palette would most likely enjoy. So that's part of my role as well is distinguishing, you know, those sort of unique differences between Haku-shu and Haku-shu.
FJALAR:I mean I must say I would like everybody to encourage somebody to just taste this stuff once in your life, because this is really really unique. It keeps on building all these different like tasting notes. It's really an unbelievable taste that you I don't think that it doesn't come quite often that you drink something like this. It's really really special. So the Mizunara I totally understand why it's so expensive. You need so much craftsmanship to make the barrel, to make it leak free. I think it's about four times longer than like an American standard barrel to make, I mean, but it's all worth the. Yeah, it's definitely worth the money.
FJALAR:The flavor experience is very unique. It's something that you yeah, it not only lingers, but it also changes.
JOHN:as it lingers, it keeps on changing and changing. You get more notes of this, more notes of that, so it's like a constant surprise, as it goes.
LAURA BRADY:I'm going to give you a quote from our Chief Blender, so Shinji Fukuyu, because he explained the impact of Mizunara and I just thought it was really poetic. It's quite beautiful, but for me it makes a lot of sense. So he was asked what does Mizunara express on a whiskey, what is unique about it? And he said it's spicy and it's insensi. It's like a temple washed by rain.
LAURA BRADY:Ah and I just thought that was it's. Of course it's beautiful and it really shows that connection that Japanese people have to their culture and it really encapsulates House of Santori. For me, it's really they're trying to achieve that.
MISJA:So this was the first part of the Santori special. Next episode we'll speak about the Hakusha 12 and 18. We'll talk about Japanese bars and bartending and the collaborations with brand partner Keanu Reeves and how Laura went on a lunch date with him. Sign up and follow and you will automatically get part 2 in your favorite pod player. Look and follow us on Instagram if you want to see pictures of the podcast and the topics that we talk about. Hope to see you next week.