Hakushu 18

Hakushu 18 - the one that got me started on whisky, and the price hike that forced me to venture further afield into the Scotches, Irish and Taiwanese whiskies. The increase in prices has outstripped the quality of the whisky. My friend managed to get a bottle of this for me before the recent steep hike, so I'm sipping it very, very slowly. And I'm definitely not going to offer my dad this again - he finished a dram in about 5 minutes, after adding ice. The only thing he tasted was the alcohol. Ah well.

Colour: Beautiful

Nose: Lemons and apples. Warm grassiness, promises of spices. Sweet oak, which complements the grassy smell very well. Almost like walking through a fruit orchard with fruits ripe for picking (ok, I'm making this one up. I've never been to apple or lemon fruit orchards before). Which really goes to show how good whisky tasting notes can only be written by people with rich travelling and tasting experiences. Some whisky tasters confidently state that some whiskies taste like earth or soil. Have they tasted soil before? Or, antiseptic, industrial oil, and a bunch of other stuff that I'm not putting anywhere near my mouth. I guess that is due to the close connection between our olfactory senses and our sense of taste. A light peatiness that is hard to distinguish from the grass, but I think I caught it peaking out.

Palate: Ripe apples, and a little spicy. Soft grassy peat, and something that borders on being a little savoury. Plum sauce, perhaps? Hmm. Reminds me of a  yuzu-miso paste I once had... Oak seems to be what is holding the whisky together. The spice comes in waves; if you hold it in your mouth a little longer, the spice makes a sharp-ish return. A nice little surprise. On the whole, smooth, as we have come to expect from Japanese whiskies.

Finish: Oak with a little spice, and a whiff of peat at the back. Shiok.

This one is good, and remains one of my favourites. But, money is in short supply, and sales assistants are recommending Auchentoshans, Ben Nevis (which cost about half to a third of the price for similar aged items) as decent substitutes for the Hakushu. Doubt I'll be buying another bottle of Hakush 18 anytime soon. Should properly cherish this one.