(Image Source: Gaia Flow)

Shizuoka Distillery is out with their second release from the W Series, featuring whiskies distilled solely using their unique Pot Still W, which utilises what is one of the world's only remaining directly heated woodfired pot still with firewood harvested from the local Shizuoka area.

This allows temperatures to run up to 800 degrees Celsius which creates whiskies that are richer, stronger, more robust and with more intensity in aromas, as opposed to indirect heating using steam which only hits temperatures of 150 degrees Celsius.

Pot Still W. (Image Source: Gaia Flow)

While it is actually more common for Japanese distilleries to use imported barley than local barley, Shizuoka Distillery is hoping to introduce more transparency with this bottling by clearly labelling it as 100% imported barley, as opposed to their previous release, the Pot Still K 100% Japanese Barley First Edition.

While the origin of the barley has no bearing on its qualification of whether it can be labelled as "Japanese whisky" under the JSLMA rules, Shizuoka Distillery hopes to show the barley's origins to demonstrate the effects of terroir of which the barley was grown.

This expression will see the use of 70% peated malt, making it the first smoky or peaty type single malt from the distillery. The Japanese single malt was matured in Bourbon barrels and Virgin American Oak barrels.

"For the second single malt W of direct fire distillation, the raw material malt is 100% foreign barley. I think it would be interesting to compare it with Pot Still K, which is made from 100% Japanese barley.

Generally, Japanese whiskey is made from 100% foreign barley. However, at the Shizuoka Distillery, which stocks a lot of Japanese barley, we have used more than 30-50% of Japanese barley for single malts so far. Therefore, 100% foreign barley whiskey will be released for the first time without using Japanese barley.

Mainly using Scottish heavy peated malt, combined with direct fire distillation, smoky whiskey was made. The more you drink, the more you will feel the scent of smoke."

- Daiko Nakamura, Founder of Shizuoka Distillery

It is bottled at 55.5% ABV and retails at 9,845 JPY or 72 USD. It is limited to 5,000 bottles sold domestically, which will be available from mid-August 2022.

(Image Source: Gaia Flow)

Our Take

We're big fans of Shizuoka Distillery's whiskies, having tried quite the number of their releases till date (reviews here) and we've certainly been closely following the distillery's progress (deep dive here). In fact, there's been growing buzz about the distillery becoming one of the next big Japanese hits - we wouldn't be surprised.

Yet, with this particular release, we're left alittle meh. It's understandable what the distillery is trying to do - push for greater transparency, all the more because they've gotten their Japanese local barley supplies settled, while presumably not as many local distilleries can boast such capabilities. This is of course on the back of the fandom for increasingly hyper-local offerings which really allows fans to know that the whisky is completely authentic to the distillery - feels special, y'know.

But I doubt this labelling is going to change anything in the industry, especially if you consider that the likes of Suntory and Nikka for the most part use imported barley as well. You could argue that that makes Shizuoka's whiskies standout all the more, given how much dedication they have to the craft, but then why would fans buy this 100% Imported Barley expression over the distillery's 100% Japanese Barley expressions then?

If they wanted to make their point clear, they'd be better off only producing 100% Japanese Barley expressions and proudly wear that on their labels. That would probably hit a home run with fans better.

That said, this doesn't speak anything of the quality of the whisky which I would presume will be of pretty good standards given what we've tried. Just seems like a strange choice of marketing strategy is all.

Got any thoughts on the new Shizuoka release? Share them here in our forum for Japanese whisky fans!

Kanpai!

@111hotpot