Of gobs and goblets


I’m utterly obsessed by glasses, and how their shape affects the taste of the drink. It amazes and upsets me that bartenders will serve shots that cost more than ¥10,000 and pour them into a glass that will bury the character. And I know that very few people believe it matters, so a few years ago I wrote a piece for the Japan Times trying to convince people. And for the latest edition of Whisky Magazine Japan, I investigated whisky glass shapes. Here’s the English translation. Breath in, it’s gonna get obsessive.

(Photos by Julen Estebal-Pretel)


Pity the wine buffs. They splash out on a bottle, invest in a cellar, a decanter, a nice ergonomic corkscrew, perhaps an aerating pourer, a foil cutter, a funnel, a table-top chiller, and they still have to worry about whether their glass suits their grape. Gone are the days of red-wine and white-wine glasses. A Bordeaux in a pinot noir glass is a prickly beast, and a pinot in a Bordeaux glass is all acid, no fruit. Drinking Gewürztraminer? There’s a glass for that too now.

Life’s a lot easier for the single-malt drinker. The only accessory we need is a bit of Sellotape to reseal our bottles. And a whisky glass is a whisky glass. You may prefer the tapered Glencairn, the Riedel inverted bell, or the copita-style tasting glass favoured by the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, but I’ll wager you stick with your glass no matter what the whisky.

But do Ardbegs and Auchentoshans really demand the same vessel? Whisky has a flavor spectrum as broad as that of wine or beer, so why don’t the glass options reflect it? I decided to set up an experiment.

I call Riedel, the Austrian glassmaker. Their 140-strong suite of glasses includes shapes for almost every grape you can imagine. They even make different glasses for VSOP and XO cognacs. But they only make one glass for whisky. I ask if they want to test the one-shape-fits-all philosophy, and luckily they do.

We meet at the Park Hotel. Riedel Japan president Wolfgang Angyal brings four sets of seven glasses: cognac, VSOP cognac, XO cognac, tequila, Chianti, vintage port and single malt.

I bring two whisky distillers: Frank McHardy of Springbank and John McLellan of Kilchoman.

The four of us will taste three styles of whisky – sherried, peaty and light – in each of the glasses.

The whisky duo prove knowledgable about glass shapes, identifying most of the line-up, but not, unfortunately, the single malt glass.

“I’ve never seen a whisky glass like that,” says McHardy. Nor has McLellan.

Angyal says Riedel worked with more than 15 whisky distillers to find the best shape. He says it’s designed to release the alcohol and maximize the sweetness. And that may be why it doesn’t do well with the first whisky, a light 8-year-old from the smallest Lowland distillery. The glass seems to release the character along with the alcohol.

“It’s good for brandy maybe, but not whisky,” says McLellan.

“In all the straight glasses (tequila, single malt), it’s just disappearing,” says McHardy.

Springbank Frank rates the single malt glass dead last of the seven vessels. His notebook reads: “Not the glass for a single malt. No real nose aroma.” McLellan and I both place it third. More surprisingly, the Riedel man also rates it third. All four of us pick the cognac XO glass as the runaway winner. It focuses the flavours, giving the light malt a powerful nose that no other glass comes close to delivering.

We also agree that one of the other cognac glasses, the one with the giant bowl, is awful. It assaults you with alcohol and gives the gentle Lowland aroma no chance at all. “We consider it basically unsuitable for any spirit these days. The surface area is just so large,” says Angyal. “The only time this glass really smells good is when its empty. Then it’s really good.”

“Glasses do smell good when they’re empty,” says McHardy.

Round two. A Speyside whisky aged in sherry butts. This might be the chance for the tequila glass to shine. It’s almost identical to a sherry glass. Can it accentuate the sherry notes?

It depends who you ask. The man from Islay thinks it’s the worst glass. The man from Campbeltown places it second, writing “nice nose, not too hot.” I liked it too. Angyal, however, has recused himself from the voting, citing conflict of interest, and is now taking notes on our reactions.

The star this time is the only wine glass in the line-up. “The Chianti glass really stands out,” says McHardy. “Yes,” says McLellan. “In the first round I just wrote ’no’. One word. I didn’t like it. But this time it’s much better. Strange.”

And so to the final round and a peaty brute from one of McLellan’s Islay neighbours.

McHardy, I suspect, is not a peat fan. He prefaces the round by suggesting that it won’t matter which glass we try, they’ll all be overpowering. He then noses the glasses, saying “not getting a lot from that,” to most of them. But he likes it in the tequila glass.

McLellan, whose blood could probably be measured in ppm of phenol, chooses the single malt glass, writing “nice with heavy, oily whisky”. I agreed with both men. The straighter glasses temper one of the world’s peatiest whiskies and give it a much subtler character. So Riedel’s design does suit single malts, but perhaps only the heavier ones.

“I think it’s time for us to revisit whisky to find the right shapes for the styles,” says Angyal. “I see for the first time that you want a bit more zing of alcohol with the light ones.” He says he’ll suggest a handmade single malt suite on his next trip to Austria.

In the meantime, if you’re wondering how those other whisky glasses might have measured up, it’s worth noting that the Riedel tequila glass bears more than a passing resemblance to the SMWS tasting glass, and the cognac XO glass is really just a Glencairn with a stem. Add a chianti glass and a single malt glass and you’ve got the start of a pretty good whisky glass suite.

Published on May 2, 2012 1:51 am.
Filed under: Uncategorized

Kilchoman x Chichibu

Earlier this year I took Anthony Wills of Islay’s new(ish) craft distillery Kilchoman to Chichibu to chat with Ichiro Akuto and poke his nose around Japan’s newest distillery.

I wanted to eavesdrop on a conversation between Wills and Akuto because, for me, these men have built the two most exciting new distilleries and are producing exceptional young drinks (Kilchoman had yet to release a 4-year-old, and Chichibu was still offering new make).

The article is out, in Japanese, in the latest issue of Whisky Magazine Japan, but here’s an English translation.

Now that you’ve had a look around, how do your distilleries compare?

Anthony: The size is very similar, and although we have a slightly different, larger mash tun, and our washbacks are stainless steel (rather than mizunara), you see the similarity. It’s very similar to what we’re trying to achieve. You get the feeling there’s more love and attention involved in distilling in smaller units.

It seems like you’re both trying to be as self-sufficient as possible. Is that right?

Ichiro: I think so. Because whisky making is not only done in the distillery. I think cultivating barley and making the casks is a very important part of making whisky, so I’d like to do it myself.

Anthony: How self-sufficient are you now?

Ichiro: Just a little. We use 5 to 10 tons of local barley. I think the quality was very good last year, so we asked local farmers to increase production. And I asked our cooper to teach us how to make casks, because he is more than 80 years old.

Anthony: Actually Ichiro is taking it a step further than me by involving coopering. In Scotland we don’t have the same independent expertise as they do here in Japan. That’s one thing I’d like to get involved in, because the cask is such a huge part of your end product. We grow the barley, and do the whole production process on site. That was the most appealing part of building Kilchoman, to show that we could grow barley locally and malt it. There’s a growing number of enthusiasts who feel more in tune with a distillery that’s produced something from start to finish. Do you think you’ll ever do floor malting here?

Ichiro: Yes, probably this year we’ll set up a malt house. I visited (English floor malting company) Malt Stars three years in a row, and we learned how to malt. Last year we borrowed a facility near here, steeped our local barley, did floor malting, turning, drying and we got our own malt. We distilled it and the spirit was very good, so now I’d like to use more local barley.

Anthony: And will you be able to use peat?

Ichiro: Yes, in the future. In Saitama they’re digging peat. It’s a special kind of peat, not used for fuel so far. They are using it for gardens or something like that, but I asked them to give us a small portion. We burned it and the smoke was really nice and really different. Probably, if I use this peat, people will be able to think “This is Chichibu”.

When you were both starting out, did you look at what was on the market and try to find a niche?

Anthony: We wanted to produce something different, and something we could mature reasonably quickly, because the perception that malt whisky has to be 10 years matured is now more in the past than it was. There is an acceptance now to try young whiskies – mainly from 5 to 10 years, but we’ve come in with a very young whisky and had people commenting very favourably. If you start with a good raw spirit – and this (Chichibu’s) is a very good raw spirit, it’s quite sweet, it’s floral, and not a lot of off notes that need maturing out. This, in 3 or 4 years time, is going to be superb. If you start a new distillery, it’s very expensive, so if you can achieve a good, young whisky, it makes all the difference to the balance sheet.

Ichiro: I’ve just started looking for Chichibu style. The combination is very important – the barley, what kind of casks. I plan to play around with lots of different things, makes lots of styles. Maybe 10 years from now we’ll have a definite Chichibu style.

The still plays a huge role in defining your whisky character, but you can’t know exactly what they’ll produce until you run them, and by then it’s too late. So how do you go about buying a still?

Ichiro: I wanted to get a heavy, rich taste, so I needed a smaller size, straight head, downward line. Everything is designed for a rich spirit.

Anthony: You rely on expertise, but they can’t guarantee until you run your stills, what style you’re going to get. We wanted a lighter, fruitier style, with peating, so we went for a tall, narrow neck and a boil bowl. But you talk to so many different people and they’ll tell you completely different things about what has an effect and what doesn’t.

What’s been the hardest part of establishing a distillery?

Ichiro: Many things, but especially dealing with authorities. We need a whisky making licence, and in Japan probably the last distillery (to be built) was Hakushu in 1973, so authorities didn’t know well about how to give me a whisky licence. I had to explain over and over, file many documents.

Anthony: For me that was very easy. The hardest for me was raising the money. It took 4 years, and even then I didn’t raise enough, but I thought “stuff it, I’m going to do this anyway”. There’s a perception when you invest money as an individual that you’re looking for a 3-5 year return on your money – well you’re not going to get that in a new distillery venture. So we had to find people with lots of money that thought it was fun to own a distillery, and if they lost their money they didn’t really care. But suddenly they’re seeing that it might work, and they’re now very excited.

Ichiro: That’s a difference between us – he needed investors but I had stocks of whisky. My grandfather left whisky, and I decided to bottle it and sell, but in the future, finally, there would be no stock left if I didn’t set up Chichibu distillery and pass stocks to the future.

Once you were up and running, how smooth was it?

Anthony: At Kilchoman, a lot went wrong. We had a fire in our kiln. We tried to dry the malt using anthracite, which if you think about it is completely mad because you can never control the temperature. We loaded it up, went away for two hours and the place was on fire. If I’d thought it through, I’d never have done it, but I didn’t have the experience. Now we switched to a warm-air drying system and it’s working perfectly.

Ichiro: Oh good.

Anthony: We had to get a new generator. We had to get a new boiler. Pipes didn’t fit and kept bursting. The boiler room was too far from the still house, too far to get the steam there at the right temperature. I could go on for hours. We’re still updating things. And it happens here I’m sure.

Ichiro: I only replaced pressure valves.

Anthony: Oh, right. OK. At one stage, every week we had pipes bursting. Too many corners, not enough straight lines.

How did you pick your locations?

Ichiro: My family brewed sake here in Chichibu, so we already knew that the water was good for fermenting, and there are many regulations to set up a distillery, but I was born in Chichibu so people here helped me.

Anthony: We decided on Islay because of its iconic status, so we would be taken seriously. I think it was the single most important decision of the whole project. And I had a friend who farmed barley here, so working with a distillery was a natural progression for him. He now grows barley for us, and we rent the buildings from him – a nice old traditional mill building where we have the still house, and an old cattle barn for our visitor’s center. The setting is great – it’s still a working farm, and the interconnection between the two is very nice.

Are you operating under capacity in these early years?

Ichiro: Yes. In the future we’d like to increase production. Maximum would be 80,000 liters.

Anthony: We’re at maximum production. I thought 100,000 liters was a good maximum, so you could still have rarity value. We only have four 5,000-liter washbacks so we can’t physically produce any more, which is fine.
How did you find staff?

Ichiro: They just came. We have 4 people, all whisky lovers who wanted to work for the whisky industry. They asked to work here before there was even a distillery. At first I refused to hire them, but they persisted. If they joined one of the giants, it might be hard to get into the whisky section. When I was at Suntory, I wanted to work for Yamazaki, but I was placed in the marketing department for import liquors.

Anthony: We were lucky to find people. It’s quite a risk for people to leave secure jobs with other distilleries and join me, but we managed to persuade a stillman to come from Ardbeg to help us set up. He’s now moved on, but because we started getting attention, when we advertised for a distillery manager, we had some very good quality people apply. John Mclellan, a distillery manager at Bunnahabhain who had worked there for 22 years, was very keen to join us, and he brought one of his stillmen from Bunnahabhain. We now have three full timers plus myself.

Kilchoman has a visitors centre, Chichibu doesn’t. Does a center help offset the costs of a new distillery?

Anthony: Because Islay has a lot of whisky tourists, it helps. As long as it breaks even or makes a small return, we’re happy, and it does. You could have a visitor center here, no?

Ichiro: Many people ask to visit here, so probably a visitor center is a good idea, but we don’t have many people, so we want to concentrate on making whisky. But probably in the future.

Anthony: I’m sure you’d be surprised. This room would make a great visitor center. It does help. Some places now get 100,000 visitors a year. That side of the business has only really developed over the last 20 years in Scotland. Before that, they were very secretive about what they did.

Have you been selling private casks?

Ichiro: Yes, nearly 100.

Anthony: Yes, we did about 300, but now we’re trying to buy them back.

Ichiro: Yes, I’d heard that. A Japanese enthusiast told me. No Japanese customers accepted your offer. Did you stop selling casks?

Anthony: Yes, we did it for a year and a half. It generated some income but I wish we hadn’t had to do it.

I imagine that Chichibu will create many styles, and Kilchoman will focus on one or two. Is that correct?

Anthony: Yes.

Ichiro: I think so. I’m trying different types of casks. I’d like to find good casks for the future, so I’m releasing different types of whisky and enjoying them with our customers: “Which one is best, do you think?” Probably in 5 or 10 years, a Chichibu style will be established.

Anthony: The danger of doing lots of different releases is you forget what the core expression is. That’s my view; it may not be the right view. We’re trying to achieve an awareness of a core Kilchoman. If you flood the market with styles, you confuse your customers.

Ichiro: Yes. I’m confusing my customers. But I’m enjoying it, and their confusion can be good. They realize “this cask is different from that cask”. To know these differences is very good to know whisky.
Anthony: Have you experimented with different temperatures for mashing, lengths of time before pumping it away to fermenters?

Ichiro: The mashing is almost always the same, but we vary the fermentation.

Anthony: And do you use different types of yeast?
Ichiro: Now, just one, because I want our people to learn the exact operation. If I use different types of yeast, why is this spirit’s character affected? What is it from? So for at least three years we want to keep the same operation and use a slightly different cut point, so they instantly know today’s spirit is a little bit different from yesterday’s because I cut like this. Or, for example, the condenser temperature is sometimes low, sometimes high and the spirit tastes different. Probably in the future we’ll use ale yeast or something.

Going forward, what do you see as the toughest hurdles?

Anthony: I think we’re small enough not to be caught up in the peaks and troughs of distilling. We’re filling only 8-900 casks a year. Some distilleries are doing that in a week. But if the bourbon industry suddenly decided to do away with the regulation that says they can only use the barrels once, then we might be in trouble. Prices would go through the roof.

Ichiro: The market fluctuates, but probably we can keep our business if we are small. I’d like to focus on the quality of ingredients and casks. Probably the whisky lovers will appreciate it, then we can overcome any challenges in the future.

Do you worry about those difficult middle years when you’re no longer a novelty but still not yet 10 years old?

Anthony: I think this is where we have to be innovative and not standardize our products. I would not dream of saying that once it gets to 10 years, that’s Kilchoman. We’re looking to be a niche distillery at the top end of the market, not standardize anything, and target the whisky enthusiast.

Ichiro: Ah, almost the same. I’d like to produce 100% Chichibu in the future. Asian markets are growing, and probably some of them will want to drink such a premium whisky. I don’t have a concrete idea for the future, but probably year by year we can think of something special.

Anthony: And I think the timing for our distilleries has been absolutely perfect, because the number of whisky enthusiasts around the world is growing all the time. The Internet’s made a huge difference, with people able to talk to each other. So the future’s very bright.


Published on September 6, 2011 8:01 am.
Filed under: Uncategorized

Yamazaki 50 Years Old

I’ve drunk some pricey drinks in my time. I tried a shot of Sunny Brook Rye from 1892 for ¥20,000, and last week I drank my first ¥7,000 cocktail (a highball made with Hakushu 25 Years Old, which is sure to raise the ire of any self-respecting whisky fan, but a shot of that stuff was ¥16,000, so the highball was the cheapest way to taste it. No, it wasn’t worth it.)
But I set what I expect to be a long-serving record tonight. Not in price terms – I believe I paid a little under ¥9,000 – but in yen per millilitre.
Check the picture. That’s how much I got. The price for a regular shot of Yamazaki 50 Years Old is ¥90,000 at Wodka Tonic in Nishi Azabu. For Golden Week they’re offering half off every drink in the bar. Which brings it to ¥45,000.

Yamazaki 50 is the oldest Japanese whisky ever released. It was priced at ¥1million per bottle, but still sold out the day it was released.

“What’s the smallest serving you’ll pour?” I asked, because I have no shame.

The bartenders conferred and said “10 mls.”

“I’ll take it,” I said. And the bartender readied the glass.

Then it occurred to me that ten millilitres of a ¥90,000 shot was still quite a bit. So I asked how much I’d just agreed to spend.

With the current 50% discount offer: ¥17,500.

“And so five mls would be half of that price?” I asked, because as I mentioned, I have no shame.

And that’s what you see in the picture above. Five millilitres of whisky.

My drinking companions both looked aghast, but they were both Scottish, and a Scotsman wouldn’t pay that much for a house. They didn’t mind sticking their tongue in my drink though.

Was it worth it? Of course not. ¥9,000 is too much for 5 millilitres of anything. Except maybe unicorn milk or an angel’s tears. It was a very good whisky, and showed what Japanese Mizunara oak can achieve.

Palate: Rich, rich, richer than Warren Buffet after a lottery win, but not in a sherry-rich sense. It was gentler, perhaps a bit incense-y, but had lost any semblance of being what I think of as a Yamazaki (I drink the 10 Year Old at home as a nightcap or for breakfast).

Mouthfeel: no idea, I only had about three millilitres after the jocks took their sip.

Finish: that also, apparently, takes more than three millilitres to deliver.

Overall, it wasn’t the bragging experience I was hoping for, and I’d much rather have a Hakushu 25 Years Old, though not in a highball. I’d probably also rather have the ¥9,000, but at least I know now.

Published on May 2, 2010 5:50 pm.
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What highball fever?

There’s only one bar in Tokyo that’s been unaffected by the recent highball fever: Rockfish in Ginza. Before the Kaku highball campaign was even a twinkle in Suntory’s marketing schedule, Kazunari Maguchi of Rockfish was turning out an almost uninterrupted stream of whisky & sodas, and while every other bartender in the country is reporting a huge spike in highball orders, Maguchi says it’s just business as usual at Rockfish, where highballs have always accounted for over 90% of the orders.

There is something uniquely refreshing about a Rockfish highball. Maguchi makes his without ice, so you can take a proper thrist-quenching swig of the drink. He also makes a drink that tastes of whisky, which is a nice departure from the ice-filled Kaku highballs that most places are turning out, which have just a twinkle of whisky taste.

Last Saturday Maguchi taught me his highball technique for a Whisky Magazine Japan feature. Here’s how it goes:

1. Put a glass and Suntory Whisky (Kakubin) in the freezer. Maguchi says this is the key difference between a Samboa highball, which uses refrigerated glasses, and a Rockfish highball. Make sure you’re using the rare 43% abv Kakubin rather than the usual 40% version (there are currently four types of Kakubin on the market, but Maguchi says the 43% yellow label is the one that works best in a highball. In fact, so crucial is it to his recipe that when Suntory stopped shipping it a few years ago Maguchi scoured the country for remaining bottles before persuading Suntory to supply him with it again.)

2. Pour 60 mls of ice-cold Kaku in an ice-cold glass.

3. Take a bottle of chilled Wilkinson soda (from the fridge, not the freezer, obviously) and turn it upside down over the whisky, letting it gush out. It’s pretty rare (unheard of?) for a Ginza bartender to pour soda like this, but Maguchi says its important to strip away part of the carbonation to make the most refreshing drink. You should use the whole bottle of soda.

4. Bend a slice of lemon peel around your forefinger and squeeze over the drink.

Photo by Will Robb

Rockfish
2F No. 26 Polestar Bldg, 7-2-14 Ginza, Chuo-ku. Tel: 03-5537-6900. Open Mon-Fri 3pm-11pm, Sat, Sun 3-9pm.

Published on April 13, 2010 3:57 pm.
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