Let’s talk briefly about the fable of the toad and the rattlesnake. You know, the one where the toad ferries the rattlesnake across a river on his back, and then the rattlesnake bites him right in the top of the head, dooming them both to a watery grave.
“What the hell did you do that for?!” the Toad cries out. To which the rattlesnake replies, “Well, it’s really all your fault: you knew I was a rattlesnake when I got on your back.”
As it pertains to Yamato: I knew it was a rattlesnake, and still I took it for a ride. Yamato was recommended to me by a whiskey magazine of unknown authorship while I was standing in line at a Whole Foods. I wish they gave their writers some credit, because on the whole I think they did a good job running through a lot of categories and weren’t overly effusive with their praise of specific bottles.
They described the Yamato as one of the many “fake” Japanese whiskies out there; according to what a360media / “The World’s Best Whiskies” is telling me, a good part of this stuff is actually Scotch. But, it’s not all sourced, they said, and if you put aside the question of what it was and where it came from, it was worth trying on the basis of merit, availability, and affordability. Whisky Advocate also gave it a thumbs up. It’s also possible it might just be Shochu.
“I wouldn’t say the Yamato is bad, but it tastes more like a middling Canadian Whisky than a Japanese Single Malt.”
According to the Yamato page, Aiko Brands learned of some “excess barrels of Japanese Whisky at one of the largest distilleries in the Yamanashi prefecture,” bought the whisky, aged it between 3 to 8 years in Mizunara oak, proofed it down with water from the area around Mount Fuji, and bottled it without chill filtration. It sells for $55 a bottle.
That same page talks about craft and the microclimate of mount Fuji and soil quality. But explore the rest of the Aiko Brands’ site, and it’s a little less certain how much they’re really trying to sell their wares on the basis of quality.
I can imagine an Aiko sales rep shouting at people like a carnival barker: “You want a scotch that comes in a suit of armor? How about vodka shaped like Christmas ornaments? How about we get you drunk with a gold cobra? You ever sip peanut butter jalapeño whiskey from a big golden bullet? No? I got a wooden car right here with your name on it. Gulp it down and let the kids push it around on the carpet.” None of this bodes well for a bottle trying to sell me on old-world craft.
Here was my reasoning for throwing Yamato in the cart (before I saw all of that other gimmicky shit on the Aiko webpage): if half of the bottle is actually, really truly Japanese Whisky, and it’s all aged in Mizunara, then it’s mostly Japanese Whisky and the price is probably fair. And sure, some of that whiskey is sourced, but just about everything MGP makes is delivered to companies who are sourcing and “white labeling” their stuff, and MGP knows what they’re doing. And again, the general scuttlebutt of the mystery whisky seemed positive.
So yeah, it’s exactly the kind of rattlesnake I’ve described elsewhere, but I didn’t think it could bite me too bad. And really, I was right. (Which is not to say I didn’t get bit: I got bit a little.)
On the aroma, there’s whipped cream and powdered sugar galore, along with lemon curd and a bit of muscularity from whatever the hell the distillate actually is. On the palate, the most dominant taste is honeycomb, like the kind you sometimes find on a high-end charcuterie plate. It develops into a lot of sweet stuff, including nougat, anisette, and pistachio, and has a mostly affable late development into a bit of dustiness and bitterness. It isn’t unwelcome, mind you, and I think it keeps the overall experience from being way too cloying and saccharine.
Now for the bite: Yamato is young and certainly tastes like it. If you absolutely hate grain whiskey and can’t abide blended scotch in any form, don’t get anywhere near this. Not always, but often, that grain will remind you of its shortcomings, either in the form of sourness in the finish, or an industrial note that pokes into the aroma, or just a general angularity in the taste—not unlike the aspartame taste of many diet sodas.
As for the Mizunara oak: if this highly-touted (and allegedly expensive and labor intensive) cask finishing method is doing something, I can’t taste it. If anything, the effect is far closer to the vast number of bourbon cask finished scotches on account of how many sticky sweet flavors are present.
At the end of the day, I wish the Yamato was aged a little longer and a little more transparent with me about its production methods—specifically, it’d be neat to know how much whiskey that was distilled and casked in Japan is going into the final blend. But, if I got my wish, I’d probably end up with something like the Hibiki Japanese Harmony, which is made with more craft from a known Japanese distillery, and as a result has a price tag well in excess of the Yamato.
I wouldn’t say the Yamato is bad, but it tastes more like a middling Canadian Whisky than a Japanese Single Malt, and there’s a lot of better-crafted and longer-aged spirits out there for $55. I rolled the dice, and I’m not butthurt by the outcome, but it’s unlikely I’m going back to this. Or probably anything in Aiko’s brand portfolio, regardless of whatever they’ve put in a ceramic bulldog, golden seahorse, AK-47, or I kid you not: a big ‘ol glass dick-and-balls.
Yes, Yamato: that storied “Japanese Whisky” brought to you by that same company that sells a dick filled with brandy. Given that unsavory/hilarious detail, Yamato is better than you might think, though not by much.
