Shinobu 10 Year Pure Malt: Mizunara Finish From a Niigata Beer Brewer

You may see this on our list as Shinobi. The bottle says Shinobu, and that's what it is.

Where It Comes From

Shinobu Distillery received its whisky license in 2017, in Niigata on Japan's western seaboard, snow country, better known for rice and sake than for whisky.

It was founded by Ken Usami, who also founded the Niigata Beer craft brewery. Brewers moving into distilling is a recurring story in Japan, and it usually means someone who already understands fermentation deeply.

Usami is also the master blender here, which matters, because blending is what this whisky is.

What It Is

A pure malt, a blended malt in Scottish terms, meaning malt whisky from more than one distillery with no grain whisky in it.

The component malts are aged in sherry, bourbon and hogshead casks, then brought together and finished in mizunara.

The Mizunara Part

Japanese oak is the reason this bottle exists.

Mizunara is difficult wood. It's porous, so casks leak; it grows slowly and crookedly, so usable staves are scarce; and it takes years longer than European or American oak to give anything but raw tannin. Distilleries use it anyway because nothing else produces what it produces, sandalwood, coconut, incense and a particular kind of spice.

Putting a multi-cask malt blend into mizunara for a finish is a way of getting that character without the decades a full mizunara maturation would demand.

It took a Gold Medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2020.

How to Drink It

Neat, at room temperature, and give it time. Mizunara's incense note is slow to arrive and easy to miss if you rush.

A single rock is acceptable. A highball wastes the finish.

Pair It With

Rich and savory. Pork kakuni, unagi don, miso bacon.

The sandalwood side is also good against dorayaki at the end of a meal.

Try It at Juraku

Shinobu 10 Year is on the whisky list at Izakaya Juraku, Lower East Side. Worth tasting next to Hibiki, which uses mizunara in a blend rather than as a finish, same wood, two very different ways of using it.