World Whisky Review #19: Akkeshi New Born 2018 Foundations 2

Distillery: Akkeshi

Region: Hokkaido, Japan

ABV: 58%

Age: Blend of whiskies 8 to 17 months old

Cask Type: Bourbon casks

Price: $25/pour

Color: 0.2, Pale Straw. Non-Chill Filtered, Natural Color.

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Nose: Peat, peat, and even more peat. It’s got smokey peat, medicinal peat, and sweet peat. It reminds me of sweet, smoky barbecue sauce. I just want to slather this all over a rack of ribs. Yum.

Palate: Incredibly warm and thick on the tongue. And by thick, I mean almost as thick as honey thick. Without any water added, it’s actually tasteless while sitting on the tongue. With some water, it does thing out and you get a lot of firey peat with a bit of sweetness in the back.

Finish: Medium in length. There’s something bitter up front but that gives way really quickly to a lingering sweet peat and campfire smoke. Again, I really want to slather this on a rack of ribs. After a bit of water, there’s no more bitterness but the peat doesn’t linger near as long either. The firey peat comes forward and the sweet peat takes the back seat.

Conclusion: Akkeshi is the newest distillery in Japan, or so my Google-Fu tells me, having opened in 2016. This release from them has barely been aged and is a blend of 8-17 month old distillate. I’m not sure this can legally be called whisky in some other countries, but I might be wrong. Whatever it is, it’s absolutely packed full of peat. It’s got a wonderful nose and a wonderful finish that is just worthy of a summer barbecue. What’s really weird though is the distinct lack of anything while this guy sits in your mouth. It’s probably because it’s so young but a curiosity nonetheless. It’s definitely intrigued me and I’ll be watching closely to see real releases come out from this distillery in the years to come.

Final Score: 77.

World whisky review #19, Japanese whisky review #7, Whisky Network Review #99

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Scoring Legend:

• 96-100: The perfect dram, nectar of the gods.
• 90-95: Near perfect, there is something truly special about this whisky.
• 85-89: Amazing, will always try to keep a bottle of this in my collection (if feasible).
• 80-84: Very Good, maybe only one minor nitpick about the whisky keeping it here.
• 75-79: Good, quite enjoyable to drink.
• 70-74: Solid, wouldn’t go out of my way to get it.
• 60-69: Meh, still drinkable.
• Below 59: If you have a bottle of this, start cooking with it instead.