Yamazaki 24 Years Old 1980

Yamazaki 24 Years Old 1980 is a sherry matured single malt from Suntory's Yamazaki distillery in Osaka Prefecture, Japan's first malt distillery, founded in 1923 in the humid Shimamoto valley south of Kyoto where three rivers converge. Distilled in 1980 and bottled in 2004 for the European market, it arrives at cask strength, 56%, a long aged release from the distillery's early years.

Matured in an Oloroso sherry butt, the Spanish oak drives deep dried fruit, raisin and chocolate, with a backbone of warm oak spice built over nearly two and a half decades. At cask strength the sherry character turns rich and concentrated over the distillery's orchard fruit, the higher proof carrying the wood's dark sweetness with real weight. It is a powerful, long aged expression of the sherried Yamazaki house style, deep and resinous in the glass, well suited to a little water to open its layers.