Asaka Yamazakura 2017 – New Born Cask #17701

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 Oloroso sherry butt, which adds an early raisin and nutty sweetness to the raw spirit. 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 62.2% it is raw and intense, a long way from the rounded house single malt but a clear look at the spirit underneath it.

Cask #17701 was filled in 2017 and bottled the same period in a run of 642, 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.