One of the famous Whisky Talk Fukuoka bottlings, this one being from the "Moon and Vanishing Animals" (月と失われゆく動物) series. This animal is the Asiastic Black Bear or Asian Black Bear, but the name of bear is "ツキノワグマ" which makes no sense to me because its katakana... again. This bear made news recently in China. It has a white-yellow chest, which on the label represents the full moon, 新月, and can stand upright. Zoo visitors in China thought that the Asiastic Black Bear they were seeing was a human in a bear suit because of its ability to hold an upright stance.

Nose: spiced wood, quite meaty, salted beef, some fruit at the end. Nice.

Palate: dry, starts off like fruit syrup and then transitions into a sweet fruity tea-like cocktail, aspects of wood and pure honey, modified vanilla, hints of melons, I swear its a fruit tea. I somehow get these sweeter notes in beer barrel whiskies.

Finish: short, like eating a boiled honey dew rind, residue of pan fried salted honey dew, fruit tea particularly peach tea, black tea.

This is not bad. I didn't realize it was finished in a beer barrel. I guess that's the portion that made it seem like fruity tea, which I'm seeing in some whiskies. Not much in terms of execution or flavor intensity, but does communicate the melon and tea well. Overall quite good.

Image courtesy of Eric Yee.

Eric Yee

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