Yamazaki 12, and Why We Do Nothing Clever With It

Most of what I write about here has something behind it. A drink we built, a bottle somebody asked us to do something with, a technique we argued about.

Yamazaki 12 has none of that. We pour it into a glass and hand it to you. That is the entire program.

I still think it is worth writing down why, because the reason we do nothing clever with it is the interesting part.

What It Is

Yamazaki is Suntory's first distillery, and Japan's first, opened in 1923 in the valley outside Kyoto where three rivers meet.

The 12 is married from whisky aged three ways. American oak, which gives the vanilla and the soft fruit. Spanish sherry casks, which give the depth. And Japanese mizunara.

Mizunara is the one worth knowing about. It is a Japanese oak that needs around two hundred years in the ground before the timber is worth cutting, and even then it is a difficult wood to make barrels out of: porous, prone to leaking, awkward to work. What it gives back is a sandalwood and incense note that almost nothing else in whisky produces. It is a small share of Suntory's casks and it is the thing people mean when they say a whisky tastes Japanese.

Peach and pineapple first, then vanilla and clove, then that incense underneath.

Why the Number Is the Rare Part

Here is the bit that surprises people.

In the 1990s, domestic whisky demand in Japan fell off a cliff and the distilleries cut production hard. Perfectly rational at the time. Then in the 2010s Japanese whisky started winning everything, the world showed up wanting it, and the stock to fill that demand had been decided against fifteen years earlier.

You cannot fix that quickly. Twelve years means twelve years. There is no version of the process where you catch up.

What followed is why so much Japanese whisky on our shelf carries no age at all. When a distillery cannot guarantee enough twelve-year-old liquid to keep a twelve-year-old bottling on shelves, it stops printing the number and blends to a house style instead. That is not a downgrade, and some of the best bottles we pour are age-free for exactly this reason. But it does mean an age statement went from being ordinary to being a claim a distillery has to be able to back.

So a number on the label, which twenty years ago was just a number, is now a promise the distillery has had to keep since 2014.

What That Means for the Price

It is not a cheap pour and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Yamazaki 12 has climbed a long way over the last decade, and it is allocated, meaning we get what we get rather than what we order. When the price moves it is not because the whisky changed. It is the same whisky. It is that the thing is scarce and everybody found out at once.

I would rather say that plainly than quietly shrink the pour.

How to Drink It

Neat, in a small glass, at room temperature, and give it a minute before you go at it.

If you want it long, it is one of the three we build the highball with, and it is the one to have when you are not having three. The carbonation we run is deliberately soft, which suits it: this is not a whisky you want scrubbed off your tongue by the bubbles.

What I would not do is build a cocktail on it. Not out of reverence, and not because it would taste bad. It is that the mizunara is the delicate part, and sugar or bitters or vermouth will sit on top of it and flatten it out. You end up paying the Yamazaki price for the one thing you can no longer taste, and a cheaper whisky would do that job better.