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Drinks Trend: The Rise and Rise of Japanese Whisky
10 Mar 2022
Once upon a time, Japanese whisky was a curio among drinkers. Today, Japanese whisky is in demand the world over with the best examples held in the same regards as the finest Scotch and American whiskies. Get ready to meet your new favourite tipple.
Japanese whisky is all about patience.
Distillers across Japan wait years for whisky in barrels to mature. Drinkers sip these rare spirits slowly and deliberately, while Japanese whisky fans understand that getting hold of the good stuff involves perseverance, research and – sometimes – a stroke of luck.
“Building a Japanese whisky collection is a long game,” says Jai Leighton, director of operations at JW Marriott Gold Coast Resort & Spa and one of the hotel’s key food and drink figures. “It’s not like you can walk into a shop and pick a lot of these bottles off the shelf. With the high-end and exclusive bottles, sometimes it can be months before something is available [in Australia], but the wait is worth it.”
Japanese Whisky Cocktails - Misono at JW Marriott Gold Coast Resort & Spa
The current interest in Japanese whisky suggests the wait was also worth it for Japan’s distilling industry. Although whisky production in Japan dates back to the 1870s, commercial production only began in 1923 when Shinjiro Torii opened Yamazaki, the country’s first distillery. One of the first people Torii employed for his venture was Masataka Taketsuru, a young man that had studied whisky-making in Scotland. Together, the duo laid the foundations for Japan’s present-day whisky industry: Yamazaki became the cornerstone of the Suntory empire, while Taketsuru would go on to establish Nikka, Japan’s other major whisky producer.
Yamazaki, Famous Japanese Whisky
For decades, Japanese whisky was produced for (and drunk by) the domestic market, but it couldn’t remain a secret forever. More and more international spirit awards were being won by Japanese distilleries, while Suntory getting the Bill Murray seal of approval in Lost in Translation (“For relaxing times, make it Suntory time!”) helped expose Japanese whisky to new markets.
“For relaxing times, make it Suntory time!” - Lost in Translation
Then in 2014, influential whisky critic Jim Murray crowned a whisky from Yamazaki “best whisky in the world” and officially put Japanese whisky on the map. He also helped trigger a global thirst that caught many Japanese distilleries off-guard and put a serious dent in their stocks. Whiskies that were once affordable and easy-to-find became scarce and prices skyrocketed. Thanks to this surge in demand, distilleries no longer had the whisky to produce certain blends. Some difficult decisions had to be made.
“Japanese whisky distilleries don’t compromise on quality,” says Leighton. “So much so that there are some distilleries that discontinued lines so that they could narrow their focus on only a few bottlings.”
Although Japanese whisky has long been featured on the menu at JW Marriott Gold Coast’s in-house Japanese restaurant Misono, the opening of a dedicated whisky bar has allowed Leighton and his team to give the spirit the attention it deserves.
Of the bar’s 60 whiskies, a third are Japanese with bottlings from pioneering distilleries Yamazaki and Suntory making up much of the range. Among the selection on offer are classic, yet rare blends including the 12-year-old and 18-year-old expressions of Yamazaki. Not that Misono is just about the big boys: Japanese whisky’s smaller players are represented by next-generation distilleries such as Kurayoshi and Shinobu, a Niigata-based operation that ages spirit in mizunara oak to create distinctly Japanese expressions of whisky.
Misono at JW Marriott Gold Coast Resort & Spa is open for dinner Tuesday to Sunday.
