Not being made of money I don’t have a lot of Mizunara sitting about the cupboard. In fact, up until very recently I didn’t have any at all.

I still remember a Bowmore Mizunara bottle came out in 2017 or so and at £250 or something it seemed more money than I could imagine spending on a bottle of whisky. Fast forward to today and it’s over £1000 at auction.

Still raging at my lack of foresight I saw this Kaiyo which is a brand I had never heard of at auction with a few hours to go sitting at a mere £20 so I snipped it up for £25 plus fees which is a steal for £100 bottle even if its trash its still worth the gamble.

The Brand

Originally, I thought Kaiyo was a distillery in Japan but it turns out to be a bottler using malt blends to create releases. Their signature brand USP though is the use of Mizunara Oak finishing in their products. That is a rare thing anyway given the rarity of that type of wood and its use in barrels but they go an extra step and put the barrels into shipping containers and send them off on a wee 3 month cruise.

The marketing material talks of Mizunara Oak providing flavour to the whisky for 2-3 years before stopping adding anything extra. Not really sure how that makes sense to me? Anyway, the idea was to throw it on a boat and let the changing environment and movement of the boat speed up the aging of the whisky before bottling. However, it is pretty clear to me this is just marketing and actually the real reason is the company don’t have bottling facilities in Japan and want to use the greater spirits bottling capacity in the UK and America.

Anyway, all in all the story is a bit weird I would say and I notice a few red flags. One of them being the address of the back of the bottle points to a serviced office block with virtual office space so this is for sure a small outfit. That’s maybe being overly picky but it’s a 1 or 2 person operation this I think.

Maybe, this £20 bet isn’t going to pay off but the story isn’t a problem if the whisky is decent.

The Whisky

Peated Japanese spirit is pretty rare, Scotch can be regularly peated but rarely do you see it outside of the UK. Peating comes from the traditional ways people in some areas of rural Scotland used peat as a fuel source for heating and lighting fires.

The labels is properly sparse on information. You won’t see a declaration on it being single malt because it’s teaspooned apparently and you won’t see it called Japanese whisky because of the cruise around the ocean to the UK and beyond.

It is bottled at 46% ABV and it’s not chill filtered so someone is caring for the whisky anyway.

Tasting Notes

Colour	Pale yellow
Nose	Subtle peppered light peat influence, cardamum pods, a touch of honey and some exotic fruit notes
Palate	More of the subtle woody char type peat. The tasting notes on the bottle have a lot of references to “sweet” but to me this is more bitter, not a dry bitter but more like an unlit cigar smell of bitter
Finish	bitter oak and a little sweet sap. The well used tasting notes of Mizunara wood are things like “Sandlewood” and yeh that is pretty accurate I think

Where Can I Buy?

Master of Malt – Kaiyo Peated

Final Thoughts

I think the Japanese oak is definitely adding most or all of the flavour profile to the whisky. If anything I would say there is too much raw oak profile in these whiskies. To me it’s not overpowering but it is dominant.

Me? I like it it’s been one of the hardest bottles to add tasting notes to for a long time. I’ve had to come back to it time and again to really pull apart the flavours and hunt behind the back of the wood influence to find any kind of spirit influence. Also, Mrs Malted had to spit it out and give it zero out of 10. I’ve only had to do that once with a Tullibardine bottle 8 years ago.