I haven’t tried many Japanese whiskies. Up to this point, the sole contender was the whisky lovingly known to Duncan as ‘the Japanese one’ that has been in his collection for a year or so - since an SMWS tasting (that’s a story for another day). ‘The Japanese one’ is a nice whisky with a lot of Speyside about it. To be perfectly honest, it’s not one of my favourites, but it’s perfectly drinkable and Duncan likes it a lot. There is something about it that we haven’t identified yet - an unidentified element of the finish. Hmmm.

Anyway, at Whisky Live, we tried an 18 y.o. Suntory. Suntory is pretty much the definitive Japanese whisky and it was certainly distinctive. Incredibly sherried, it was a bit too sweet for my taste, but interestingly, it had something of ‘the Japanese one’ about it - we should really try to tie down this mysterious element to the finish of these Japanese whiskies. A challenge for another day.