Matsui Shuzo The Matsui Sakura Cask Cask #319

The Matsui Sakura Cask Cask No. 319 is a single cask, cask strength single malt from Matsui Shuzo's distillery in Tottori prefecture, bottled in 2020 at 48% for the European market. Drawn from The Matsui range of own-distillation single malts, it represents one of the house's most distinctly Japanese maturation choices: sakura, or Japanese cherry wood, which is rare in whisky production and contributes a floral and fragrant profile unlike American or European oak.

Sakura cask maturation gives delicate blossom and fresh fruit aromatics with a gentle new-wood brightness, and a softness on the palate that belies the cask strength 48% delivery. The spirit retains the energy of a young single malt while the unusual wood adds an aromatic dimension that American oak cannot replicate. A light-handed, fragrant and genuinely distinctive single cask expression from Tottori, showing the house in an experimental and native Japanese idiom.