Re:Why Japanese Whisky Is So Good and So Hard to Find
by tptacek on Friday July 13, 2018 @12:46PM
(#17524510)
It's not supposed to taste "Japanese". It's supposed to taste good. Japanese people are fiends for whiskey (it's one of their endearing cultural quirks), and they are good at making it.
The interesting thing about Japanese whiskey is that they tend to produce single malts or blends of single malt, just like Scotland, but their palates are more American than Scottish. American whiskey is almost all bourbon and rye --- lots of corn, lots of rye, not a lot of barley. Japanese whiskey, like Scotch, is all malted barley --- but no smoke, no iodine, no salt.
You can sort of think of the Japanese whiskey industry as the single-malt partner to the American whiskey industry, maybe the same way Ireland is the non-malted partner to Scotland.
The interesting thing about Japanese whiskey is that they tend to produce single malts or blends of single malt, just like Scotland, but their palates are more American than Scottish. American whiskey is almost all bourbon and rye --- lots of corn, lots of rye, not a lot of barley. Japanese whiskey, like Scotch, is all malted barley --- but no smoke, no iodine, no salt.
You can sort of think of the Japanese whiskey industry as the single-malt partner to the American whiskey industry, maybe the same way Ireland is the non-malted partner to Scotland.