Dramtastic's reviews now on Nonjatta

"Sunset in a glass"

Some Nonjatta readers will be very familiar with Brian aka "Dramtastic". He is the biggest advocate of Japanese whisky on the Whiskymag forum and so is really Nonjatta's brother-in-arms. Anyway, he has been kind enough to allow some of his tasting notes to be shared on Nonjatta too and so, over the next few days, I will be adding his impressions as updates to existing reviews and creating new pages where Brian is tasting whiskies that are completely new here.

It was interesting to discover that Brian, an Australian living in Brisbane, is fellow graduate of Shot Bar Zoetrope. I know I keep mentioning the place but for me it really is the finishing school for a proper Japanese whisky buff. Stephen Phelan, who wrote an excellent article in the Guardian over the weekend about Japanese whisky bars, asked me for my recommendations and we both agreed that Zoetrope was an absolute must. Brian said his conversion to the Japanese stuff started with a tasting set at Zoetrope: "(I ordered it) just out of curiosity, thinking they would have some novelty value only. Well, I was blown away and, although I still drink and buy Scottish whisky, my passion is now Japanese whisky."

Brian continues:

"I feel that I have come into it at a good time. Though they are taking the whisky world by storm, Japanese whisky makers are still relatively unkown by the whisky world at large. I feel I have found my whisky niche. There is so much history to be discovered. Because I now buy directly from Japan, there are also so many varieties and styles to be discovered as well.

People are starting to get to see Karuizawa, Yoichi, Yamazaki, Hakushu, Ichiro's, but only know the bottlings that, no matter how good, are drip fed to the western world. What about stuff from Mars, Kirin or factory only releases from Yamazaki/Hakushu and Yoichi? I just bought a bottle of 1993 Single Malt from White Oak Distillery (waiting on delivery), their latest single malt release

There are also the many varieties of Owners Casks from Yamazaki and Hakushu. Just take a look at the menu at Shot Bar Zoetrope (I have since been back a second time) and you start to get the drift. Even then it's just the tip of the iceberg."

I will be posting Brian's tastings on Nonjatta over the next few days (after I have finished that, I really must get down to putting some of my own tasting notes onto Nonjatta). Brian is self deprecating enough to add: "I'm no expert taster, just another punter who knows what he likes." Having read his reviews, there is quite a lot more to them than that. I want to say though that I am definitely in the just- a-punter-who-knows-what-he-likes category and, personally, I am just as interested in normal people's impressions of whisky as I am with expert impressions.

For me, a normal person's impression, which has no need to systematise and objectivise itself across thousands of tastings, has just as much relevance to my buying decisions as an expert tasting (I do believe some people are amazingly gifted in this area). Some people who really have some expertise (the phenomenal Serge of Whiskyfun.com, very prominent among them) have been nice enough to add a bit of respectability to the tastings here but, as I say, Nonjatta is edited by a leather tongue. I really would urge anybody who reads Nonjatta and has tried a Japanese whisky to add their ideas/impressions/contradictions to the mix here.

Dramtastic's rating system is explained here. In some of his early reviews, Dramtastic used a 5 point scale similar to my own.

Photograph from Flickr. "Sunset in a glass" by t3rmin4tor. I did not have a photo of Dramtastic for the post and this image has an Australian connection (taken at a Hobart distillery) so I thought I would just share a beautiful whisky image.