Nose: Honey, toffee, white grapes, white peaches, Rose(wine), pink grapefruit, dried pears. Water adds a floral note of heather.
Palate: Savory spices, puff pastry, raisins, Rose(wine), pink grapefruit. Quite prickly on the palate without water. With water more of the pastry, heather honey, pepper, apples, macadamias and the dried pears.
Finish: Puff pastry, baking spices, heather honey, apples, Rose(wine) and a little drying wood.
Last Word: To get the best out of this I diluted to about 40-43%abv. Probably different to most of the Japanese whiskies you might have tasted, I’d say more Scottish in style(yes I know there are a ton of different Scottish Whisky Styles). I quite like it after a liberal dash of water is added.
Rating: 84/100
Seeing the Akashi Ume Plum-flavored whisky washing up on the shores here in the U.S. for about $40/bottle, which is the same price as their (underwhelming, in my opinion) NAS Eigashima blend. Anyway, just curious if anyone has tried this and, if so, how it was?
Aside from the plain old black label blend. Akashi needs to age their casks more. The 3 year single malt is horrible. Their 5 year expressions vary from cask to cask, but most are still pretty harsh. The best Akashi I had was the 8 year Sherry Olorosso Cask. Perhaps adding water would make the younger ones more palatable.
and that’s the great thing about whisky…. all about personal tastes(not many reviews on this but one well known whisky reviewer gave this 89/100 from memory so go figure).
I don’t think I’d necessarily agree about aging longer. Look at what Chichibu and Mars can do at the same age and I don’t think the 12, 14 and 15 year old sherry cask whiskies I’ve had from Akashi where all that crash hot. I put that down to cask selection more than distillation. May I recommend the Ariake, Sakura and Uozumi bottling’s if you have not tried them.