About
From Suntory's high-altitude distillery. Fresh, herbal, lightly smoky — bright, precise, made for a Japanese-style highball.
The distillery sits about 700 metres up on Mount Kaikomagatake in Yamanashi, inside a forest Suntory owns and manages. It opened in 1973, fifty years after Yamazaki. Keizo Saji built it to make a different malt from the first distillery, so the blenders would have two distinct styles to draw on. The water is rain and snowmelt filtered through granite, and Suntory says it takes around twenty years to reach the aquifer.
Fermentation runs in wooden washbacks, which hold heat in the cool mountain air. A range of pot-still shapes and cask types is used to suit the site. The Distiller's Reserve, the bottling without an age statement, marries young lightly peated malt with older, more heavily peated stock. It is bottled at 43 percent.
Keep it simple at home. Fill a tall glass with ice, add a measure and top with very cold soda.
Structure
Picked on Stef's structure profile.
