Rare Karuizawa whiskies to go on sale in London
As Britain’s thirst for Japanese whisky grows, rare bottles from the closed Karuizawa distillery will go on sale at 9am on Friday through The Whisky Exchange.
Bottled by Elixir Distillers and named the ‘Emerald Geishas’, 170 bottles of Karuizawa 33-year-old and 265 bottles of Karuizawa 35-year-old will be up for grabs.
To give everyone a fair shot of getting their hands on a bottle, The Whisky Exchange will open an online ballot at 9am on Friday, which will close just before midnight on Sunday 4 February.
“Any fan of Japanese whisky will know just how rare Karuizawa is and how exceptional the liquid can be. Karuizawa is renowned for its dark, Sherried whiskies and this 33-year-old single Sherry cask is truly wonderful.
“For me, the Bourbon cask-aged Karuizawas are even more impressive, and are much rarer too,” said Sukhinder Singh, co-founder and owner of The Whisky Exchange.
“It offers rich, intense tropical fruit notes that are just…wow. For collectors of old and rare Japanese whisky this is a unique opportunity to acquire single cask bottlings that simply won’t exist in the future,” he added.
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Based in Miyota on the southern slopes of an active volcano, Karuizawa distillery, which was founded in 1955, closed in 2001.
Due to their rarity, Karuizawa whiskies typically leap in value immediately after their release. Previous bottlings of Golden Geishas sold at auction for double their original selling price.
“The inspiration for choosing emerald for this limited release was the rarity of both the precious gem and the whisky,” Elixir Distiller’s creative director Raj Chavda said.
“Combining beautiful Japanese art forms with complex hot foil and intricate embossing embellishments gives these bottles a wonderfully sculptured finish,” he added.
Both whiskies will be sold by The Whisky Exchange for £3,750 a bottle.
I am concerned over the declared alcohol strength of both of these products. For a 35yo whisky to still have a declared ABV of over 59% would question what the actual strength was when the liquid was filled to cask. From a pot still distillation over 35 years ago and calculating the accepted alcohol loss, this would indicate an original cask filling strength of around 77% ABV ?? This can also raise the question over the quality and of how active the cask was during the maturation period. If the cask was filled at around 63 – 64% as was common in the 1980`s, with normal maturation in a quality active cask we should expect a natural strength of around 46 – 47% ABV if bottled today.
The alcoholic strength of whisky matured in Scotland goes down over time because the alcohol in the cask evaporates faster than the water. However, in other maturation circumstances (to do with humidity in particular) water in the cask can evaporate faster than alcohol, or at a similar rate, so the strength of the spirit goes up or is maintained near the filling strength. This is what happened at Karuizawa, but it is not a unique phenomenon and also frequently occurs with rum and bourbon due to the climate conditions where the spirit is matured.