World Whisky Day 2021: Best Whiskies to buy to celebrate the occasions in style dailystar.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailystar.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Earlier this year, I carefully selected four bottles to spotlight in a feature on Japanese whisky slated for our May 2021 issue. Within a month, I had begun to question every choice.
The liquid in the bottles hadn’t changed. They were still delicious, relatively affordable and accessible, the main criteria for the list. I had vetted each to ensure they were from different regions and represented a variety of flavor profiles and production styles.
Yet, here’s what had changed: the Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association released new labeling standards for its association members mid-February, slated to go into effect April 1, 2021. As I began to peel back the layers of the new rules, I realized that two of the four bottles I had selected may no longer be labeled as Japanese whisky. This meant half of the bottles in the line-up were now at odds with the rest.
Unlike most whiskies, the best Japanese whisky has no real distinction in terms of regional styles, nor does it have any unifying character. This means bottles could be sharp and spicy, smoothly mellow, herbal and zesty or anything in between depending on their blend, grain and cask-ageing method.
It’s important to note that the Japanese whisky industry has recently experienced a shake-up. Previously, producers could use ingredients from other countries as long as the whisky was bottled in Japan, but today stricter measures must be met in order for the product to carry the label “Japanese whisky”. You can read more about these conditions here.
What the new Japanese whisky regulations actually mean for collectors moneyweb.co.za - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from moneyweb.co.za Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Feb 19, 2021
What is Japanese whisky? Despite its meteoric rise on the global connoisseur market, until this week that question was more complicated to answer than you might expect.
Unlike bourbon and Scotch born of the United States and Scotland, respectively the preferred brown spirit of Japan carried no actual denomination of origin. As long as the liquor was bottled within the country, it could be sourced from anywhere on the planet.
“To say that whisky-making regulations in Japan are loose is a major understatement,” Stefan van Eycken, author of “Whisky Rising: The Definitive Guide to the Finest Whiskies and Distillers of Japan,” told Bloomberg in 2019. “If they were any looser, you’d be able to sell tap water as Japanese whisky.”