A comment left today by a regular reader of The Japanese Whisky Review got me thinking. Basically it was in regards to my recent tasting notes on a couple of releases from Mars Shinshu and how difficult they are to source in Europe. These reviews were of stock that has been maturing at the current distillery site, but was distilled before production was stopped and at one stage, thought to be never starting up again.
Now I reviewed some New Pot peated Mars whisky a while back so I thought I’d go check the distilled dates. Yep, March 2011. So, potentially we may see the first of the new production spirit from this great little distillery that can be officially called whisky as early as April this year being 3 years old. Now that is something to get seriously exited about!
The Japanese Whisky Review
By Dramtastic Est 2012
There are 2 mars Mizunara casks left.
Less then 300 barrels of malt whisky, most of which is new stock.
And #1 drinks really wants to buy them from Hombo 🙁
Which would mean a big price increase.
Thank Niels. Would be tough to take if No.1 Drinks ruins another distillery.
When you note how spectacularly good their recent aged releases are, you would hope they will hold some new make back for maturation.
I seem to recall reading that there are even some old mizunara casks of Mars in their warehouses – now those would be worth trying!
Right now it’s just my speculation Alan. Mars were more than happy to release 3 versions of New Pot heavily peated and they are very, very good for their age. They got a lot of press with their WWA award for the 3 plus 25 so why not keep going when you are on a bit of a roll? I’m not saying that they will not have stock that they will continue to mature to 10 years old and beyond as well.
Yes indeed. I was told they have a few casks of Mizunana distilled back in the 80’s. Hope they will be releasing them soon.
It will be interesting to see if they go down that path, I mean bottle at 3 years, or wait. Naturally bringing out a 3yo will be beneficial to the distillery – financially. As we know many distilleries do so (bottle early, which is perfectly ok to do so), but will they persevere and continue to further mature the stock from 2011? I guess economics and demand play a big part in it. Interesting nevertheless to think about the possibilities.
As we know, not much of the old Mars whisky stock left. Again only speculation, but maybe they will go down the Ichiro Akuto route. Akuto-san has still been bottling and selling the old Hanyu stock along side his young Chichibu whisky.