There are lots of different styles in the whisk(e)y world, and we all have our preferences. Last Friday Dion spoke about his preference towards the bolder facets of scotch, in contrast to the more crisp and elegant style of the Irish. Pure from a taste point of view. I’m a bigger fan of Irish whiskey, but feel kinda similar about the Japanese style. Just not something I personally prefer.

I’ll have to make myself clear: we only just scratched the surface in tasting Japanese whisky, most of them lying in the sub € 80 range, which are often just scotch blends in disguise. I’m a hundred percent sure there are bottles which will blow our minds, but we like to do these explorations bottom up. And we care about our budget, too. 

Thanks to Yoshino Spirits, who kindly provided this bottle, we got to explore the surface a bit further. Umiki is a blended whisky, with a component of Japanese ocean side whisky, finished on pine barrels. Now you have my interest, I’m very curious how pine wood works with whisky, so here we go. This whisky is bottled at 46%

A fresh and youthful whisky, the pine wood aspect is very present and fun to notice. But that’s also almost the only thing that makes this dram interesting to me. A welcome change, but not something I’d keep in my cabinet for a very long time. 

We have also reviewed its brother: Kamiki, with a cedar wood component. Stay tuned for that, it’s a very interesting one too.