Karuizawa 1984 for Shinanoya & TWE

Post by Stefan Van Eycken, Tokyo


While TWE has put a sister cask in a lottery that's ending on 7 February, our friends at Shinanoya - the hardest working whisky people in the business here - are releasing their own 1984 Karuizawa (#3662, 61%abv), which is actually a joint bottling with TWE. It's one of those classic Karuizawas from its Golden Era (the early 80s) and it doesn't look like the 271 bottles will last very long. They will go on sale some time on Wednesday from Shinanoya's brand new online shop. Very reasonably priced (31,500 yen), this bottle sports a lovely label that continues their "Japonism" theme (started with the two Mars releases last year).

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi,
Do you know if it is for Japan only?
Or do you expect that TWE will release any bottles from this cask?

Finally, wondering if you have tried any of the Karuizawa releases of LMDW and TWE from 2013 shows.

Regards,
A
My understanding is that TWE will be releasing this too in the future. For this release, Shinanoya is in charge of labeling etc, so presumably it will be identical when TWE will sell their part of the outturn.

I have loads of recent Japanese whiskies on my desk to review (and in fact, very soon we will review all of the recent TWE Karuizawas). The problem is getting round to it... I need to think of my health, too. But don't worry - we will discuss them soon!
Anonymous said…
Thanks Stefan!

Fully understand what you mean about health. Whisky is nice, but it needs restraint.

Very interesting that there are lots of releases happening lately. Seems that this is the ideal time to bottle the 80s karuizawas?

On another note, the 3663 on lottery by TWE had some interesting review notes. Sounded abit oaky (chary)..
Billy said…
I wrote the TWE notes :)
It's classic, big sherry Karuizawa - there's a lot of oak, but it's pretty well balanced with other flavours. It's pretty intense.

It's a bit much for me, but I'm more fond of the recent 1981 and the lighter bourbon matured whiskies from the distillery.

Everyone else in the office tell me I'm wrong... :)
Anonymous said…
Thanks Bob.

Anonymous said…
Well that was a joke, waited till midnight when they added it to the shop, immediately added a bottle to my cart and selected the delivery date, only for it to take me back out of the order process and display that it was sold out!
We are talking a few minutes here.

Andy
Well, I knew it was going to be like that. It took less than 2 minutes to sell out. So if it took you a bit longer than that to enter all your details, you missed out...
Anonymous said…
...which leaves me to wonder just how many of that 271 outrun they had to sell on the website. I'm guessing less than 10-It was one bottle per customer and disappeared in a literal flash!

Andy
Adrien T. said…
Andy,
Same as you. Sale opened at midnight. I was there at 00:02 but already sold out. Unbelievable...
Now everyone knows what the record is to beat (to get through the check-out process on the new Shinanoya site): 1 minute and 40 seconds!

Popular Posts