Yamato Lady Tomoe and Takeda Armor: Mizunara Whisky With a Samurai Behind It

Naming whisky after warriors is easy marketing. Occasionally the story is better than the marketing.

Tomoe Gozen

Tomoe Gozen fought in the Genpei War in the late 12th century and is one of the very few female samurai recorded by name in Japanese history.

Accounts credit her with commanding as many as a thousand soldiers, not a token presence on a battlefield but an actual military leader.

Tomoe means comma, and it's also the name of the comma-like swirl used on Japanese family crests. She wore that pattern on her shoulder armor, which is where the bottle's design comes from.

The Whisky

Lady Tomoe is distilled in Yamanashi and aged eight years in mizunara oak, then transferred into a single vat for additional time.

The composition is 60% grain and 40% malt, which is worth knowing. Grain-forward blends are usually built for approachability, and putting one into Japanese oak for eight years is an unusual pairing, mizunara is normally reserved for malt, where there's more to work with.

What you get is a softer, more accessible whisky carrying the sandalwood-and-incense character Japanese oak is prized for.

Takeda Armor

The companion release, also mizunara, named for the armor of the Takeda clan, the Kai province house whose cavalry dominated 16th-century warfare and whose leader Takeda Shingen was one of the most feared commanders of the Sengoku period.

Yamanashi, where these whiskies are made, is the old province of Kai. The naming isn't decorative; it's local.

How to Drink Them

Neat, at room temperature, to meet the mizunara. This is not oak that survives heavy dilution.

A single large rock is fine. The grain content means they take a highball better than most mizunara-aged whisky, if that's your mood.

Pair Them With

Rich, sweet-savory food. Unagi don, pork kakuni, yakitori with tare, kushi yaki don.

Try Them at Juraku

Yamato Lady Tomoe is on the whisky list at Izakaya Juraku, Lower East Side, and Takeda Armor is available by the bottle for the table.