Karuizawa 31 Years Old ElD (Elixir)

Karuizawa 31 Years Old is a single-cask single malt from Karuizawa distillery in Nagano Prefecture, bottled in 2017 by Elixir Distillers for the UK market at 59.4% cask strength. The Elixir releases were a series of aged Karuizawa expressions bottled from stock produced before the distillery closed in 2000, bringing older and older examples of the sherry-dominant style to specialist UK drinkers through the 2010s.

Three decades in an Oloroso sherry cask delivered the hallmark Karuizawa depth: dark dried fruit, leather, bitter chocolate and a savoury, incense-tinged complexity that comes from long contact between Golden Promise malt and well-seasoned sherry oak at a high-altitude Nagano site. At 59.4% the whisky is full and concentrated, but patient addition of water reveals the layered fruit and spice beneath the initial heat. Single casks from Karuizawa at this age are increasingly rare.