K&L Exclusive Tsunuki Japanese Single Cask

The wonderful Tsunuki distillery is truly a pilgrimage worth taking for any lover of great whisky. I’ve made the trek twice, and along with Kanosuke, it stands as one of the crown jewels of the recently anointed Kagoshima whisky trail. Visiting this historic property can be deceiving, as you might expect a new distillery to feel new, but it’s actually the longtime home base of Hombo Shuzo’s historic operations. The reception center is literally Hombo-san’s family home where he grew up, and the site also includes the old, now defunct grain stills that were crucial to the success of Hombo Shuzo’s shochu business. The beautiful property also features World War II era dunnage warehouses, where this special cask was aged. The selection of this barrel represents one of my favorite cask-picking experiences in nearly twenty years of doing this. After a beautiful tour with chief distilling manager and blender Tatsuro Kusano, we retired to an elegant tatami-adorned washitsu tucked behind the visitor center.

There was an impressive lineup of casks waiting for us, and every single one was a joy to taste. We initially selected a beautiful medium-peated Komagatake, but the others were almost impossible to separate. After plenty of hemming and hawing, I mentioned to Kusano-san that many of our customers are obsessed with heavily peated, heavily sherried malts, a style we see less and less out of Scotland, and wondered if Tsunuki had ever gone in that direction. His eyes lit up, he raised a finger, and said, “I’ll be right back.” He sprinted across the campus to his blending room and returned with two samples dark as night. It felt like I’d spoken and the whisky gods had answered. The cask was everything we hoped for, a big, bold, unapologetic beast with deep barbecue intensity. Fittingly, Kusano-san is a huge fan of American-style barbecue, so if you ever visit the distillery, that’s the perfect omiyage.

I just about started crying and was so honored and grateful that this generous colleague had gone the extra mile to find something so special for us. It's not only these experiences that put Tsunuki at the top of my list, it's the incredible whisky they continue to produce ever single day. We bought 2 more barrels this October and hopefully many more to come. The barrel rested for another year after selection and only grew more compelling over time. During bottling, the distillery even sent us a photo showing thick, opaque fatty oils suspended throughout the whisky and asked if we wanted it filtered. The answer was an emphatic no. Keep every bit of that cloudy magic.

I won’t bother with a formal tasting note here, because if you haven’t already grabbed a bottle, you’ve probably already missed the boat. But if you love the great sherried beasts of Islay, this magical cask will absolutely knock you out for the count.

— David Othenin-Girard, K&L Spirits Buyer

Mars Tsunuki 8 Year Old K&L Exclusive 1st Fill Sherry Cask #T326 Japanese Single Malt Whiskey (700ml) ($189.99)

K&L Notes: This exceptional single cask from Mars Tsunuki represents a crucial chapter in the long and often storied history of Japanese whisky. Produced by Hombo Shuzo, a family owned company founded in 1872, Mars traces its whisky lineage to the very beginnings of malt distillation in Japan. Long before Japanese whisky gained international fame, Hombo was quietly experimenting with malt production, helping lay the technical and philosophical groundwork for the category. While Komagatake Distillery serves as the spiritual heart of Mars, Tsunuki represents its future. Established in 2016 in Kagoshima at the tropical southern tip of Japan, Tsunuki was built firmly in traditional practice, drawing on the region’s warmer climate and abundant natural resources to explore a different expression of Japanese malt whisky. But because it was yet to be defined, the distillery offered Mars a chance to push the boundaries of what's possible. This heavily peated single cask is a perfect example of the courageous potential of this special distillery. Distilled in 2017 from barley peated to 50 ppm and aged high quality first fill sherry hogshead. This is rich sherry and peat at its very finest and a style almost never seen in Japan. Aged in the hot, humid dunnage style warehouses at Tsunuki for nearly 9 years, it was bottled at natural cask strength without chill-filtration. A total of 236 bottles, this release stands as a bold statement of intent for the distillery and for Mars as a whole.