Until April 1, 2021, a bottle labeled Japanese whisky could be made from whisky imported from somewhere else. Japan had no formal definition of the category until industry standards took effect that spring, more than a century after Masataka Taketsuru went to Scotland in 1918 to learn how to make Scotch.
This episode follows what happens to a spirit when the technology behind it crosses a border and meets new water, new wood, and a new climate. It covers Taketsuru’s training in Scotland and the Yamazaki Distillery he helped build in 1923, the different still shapes inside a single Japanese distillery, what makes Mizunara oak so hard to work with, how altitude changes the boiling point of ethanol, why tropical heat speeds up aging and the angel’s share, the rise of rhum agricole and Martinique’s AOC, and the Japanese Highball.
Full show notes, research sources, and transcript at thealchemistsbar.com.
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