Asaka Yamazakura 2017 – New Born Cask #17002

Asaka sits in Fukushima's Nakadori basin, where hot summers and freezing, wind driven winters make casks expand and contract sharply and the spirit takes on wood fast. The distillery, run by the Koriyama sake house Sasanokawa Shuzo, refitted for whisky in 2016 and released these New Born single casks in 2017 to show its raw distillate before it had aged into whisky.

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 mizunara cask, which lends a dry sandalwood and temple incense note even at this early stage. 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 62.7% it is raw and intense, a long way from the rounded house single malt but a clear look at the spirit underneath it.

Cask #17002 was filled in 2017 and bottled the same period in a run of 275, 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.