Last Saturday I may have been swearing a bit on Facebook and Twitter. I’ll explain why below.

Yoichi is one of my favourite Japanese distilleries and since I was planning to do a lot of SMWS reviews over the coming weeks, I thought this was a nice one to start with. Yoichi is one of the last distilleries (maybe the last) that still uses coal fired stills. It’s situated on Japan’s island of Hokkaido, in the far north of the country. In the winter it can get quite polar there so there is a lot of wheather influence on the maturing casks as well. This results in a rather unique whisky.

Nose:
Slightly smoky from the start with sweet cherries and polished wood. Rather sweet and on closer inspectation there are also other red and black fruits like blackberries. I also get a lot of spices including ginger.

Taste:
Very dry with a massive amount of wood influences. Almost astringent. Sweet red and black fruits but most of all the cherries are back. Furniture polish and leather wax. Incredibly sharp.

Finish:
The finish is slightly different and very, very long. It starts of rather sharp but soon settled down into loads of forest fruits with mostly cherries and blackberries. I also get a slight hint of custard and tropical fruits like mango.

An absolutely stunning dram with loads of great flavours. Although it’s bottled at almost 60% ABV, it tastes more like it is a lot higher than that. Therefore I thought it a good idea to give it a few drops of water to get the sharp edges off the mouth feel and get a bit more flavour out. Luckily there was a glass of water on the table and I knicked a few drops from that. Or so I thought.

Apparently after about 6 years of drinking mostly water, Anneke decided to get a few cartons of Crystal Clear. For the non-Dutch: That is some chemically preparing saccharin influenced fruit drink. Which looks exactly like water. So, instead of water I got that in my superb whisky. Absolutely ruined my dram and since I only had a small sample of 2cl, I ruined everything I had of this great (and expensive) whisky. My wife half expected me to hurl my glass through the living room in frustration, but instead I ranted on Facebook and Twitter. I can still almost cry thinking back about this.

Anyway, this is one of the best drams I’ve had this year and I will add it to my wish list for sure. Hopefully a bottle comes by on some auction site or someone who reads this will sell one to me 😉

Yoichi 1982-2009, SMWS ‘Almond slices and Cricket bats’, Refill ex bourbon hogshead, 59.6%, used to go for € 105, but I expect it to have doubled in price.