Karuizawa: bourbon casks are best

Karuizawa is an almost unobtainable whisky. I’m incredibly lucky in getting to try it from time to time, but I hold a strange opinion that gets me strange looks from whisky fans: I think bourbon-cask-matured Karuizawa is better than its sherry-cask equivalent.

Karuizawa’s warehouses back in 2012. Now long gone

Karuizawa has become a cult distillery over the past 10 years, with bottle prices soaring into the thousands of pounds and releases becoming more infrequent. It’s understandable, with the distillery not only closed for almost 20 years, but now also demolished – there will be no more whisky from Karuizawa, barring...