Karuizawa 30 Years Old 1984 Cask #8173 (LMDW)

Karuizawa was a single malt distillery in Nagano Prefecture, operating from 1956 until its closure in 2000 and demolition in 2016. Though the distillery is best known for its Oloroso sherry-matured releases, bourbon-aged Karuizawa casks offer a different face of the same raw materials: the Golden Promise barley and small pot still distillate in a lighter wood, over the same long Nagano winters. Cask #8173 was distilled in 1984, matured for 30 years in an Ex-Bourbon Cask and bottled in 2014 by La Maison du Whisky for France at 58.5% cask strength.

The cask data notes honey as the characteristic of this bottling, and the Ex-Bourbon maturation over three decades adds vanilla cream, dried orchard fruit and a warm cereal finish to that honeyed base. Without the sherry structure, the spirit's own softness and the distillery's fruit-forward character are more directly audible, making this one of the few Karuizawa 30-year releases where bourbon wood, rather than sherry, shapes the story.