Asaka Yamazakura 2016 – New Born Cask #6214

When the Asaka distillery restarted whisky for Sasanokawa Shuzo in 2016, it bottled a set of New Born single casks the following year: distillate held only months in wood and released as spirit, not whisky. The idea was to let drinkers follow the make from the start, one cask and one wood at a time, rather than wait years for a finished single malt.

Because this is new make, only months in wood, it is the distillery's spirit caught early rather than a matured whisky. Held in a first fill ex-bourbon American oak cask, sibling to the others in the set, with early vanilla and a green malt core. The young distillate shows Asaka's clean, fruity character, malty and bready with a green, cereal edge, while the cask has begun to lend its first colour and sweetness. At 63.4% it is raw and intense, a long way from the rounded house single malt but a clear look at the spirit underneath it.

Cask #6214 was filled in 2016 and bottled the same period in a run of 277, part of the New Born set that the distillery used to show its first distillate across different woods. It is best read with water and curiosity, as a record of where an Asaka whisky begins rather than where it ends. Cask strength, natural colour, not chill filtered.