Cuvée presentation
A Karuizawa single cask (#7924) distilled in 1981, aged in ex-sherry casks and bottled on 21st October 2011 at cask strength by Number One Drinks, the company founded in 2006 by David Croll and Marcin Miller which bought the distillery's stocks in 2011. The label only gives the most basic information, such as when each bottle was filled and labelled by hand for the rare visitors to the distillery. Noriko Kakuda Croll and David Croll founded a whisky import company in Japan at the end of the 1990s. It was through this that they met Marcin Miller, author and editor of the Whisky Magazine. Together, they created a Japanese edition of the Whisky Magazine and the Whisky Live in 2000. In 2005, they founded Number One Drinks Company, which is dedicated to exporting exceptional Japanese whiskies, such as Karuizawa or Hanyu, first in Europe and then internationally. After trying to buy Karuizawa from Kirin, they consoled themselves by getting their hands on the distillery’s stock of 364 casks in August 2011, following tough negotiations. A limited edition of 216 bottles.
The distillery Karuizawa
Japan, Nagano. Distillery closed and dismantled.
Mothballed in the early 2000s, Karuizawa closed definitively in Spring 2012. Located at the foot of one of Japan's most active volcanoes, Mont Asama, Karuizawa began distilling in 1956. Equipped with small direct coal-fired stills, Karuizawa produced a robust, full-bodied malt that took perfectly to long maturation in ex-sherry casks from Spain (first fill) and Scotland (second fill, such as Mortlach). Karuizawa was a malt distilled to produce the Ocean blends of the Daikoku group. Bottlings of single malts were at the time reserved for the distillery's visitor centre and a handful of private clients. These hand-bottled versions were offered as cask strength, single cask vintages. Only what was needed for the bottling was removed from the cask, with the rest left to continue ageing in barrel. This practice explains why the same barrel can exist in various bottlings of different ages and versions. This means that the 1970 cask #6177 exists under two labels, one a 31 Year Old Distillery Edition (2002) and the other a 42 Year Old Vintage Single Cask Edition (2012). It was under the aegis of Number One Drinks, who bought the 300 or so barrels still available at the distillery in 2006, that Karuizawa joined the ranks of legend.
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