A sherry-matured Komagatake single cask, distilled in 1988 at Mars Shinshu and bottled in 2014 at 26 years old. It was reduced to 46% and filled 498 bottles.
About This Whisky
Cask #568 is a close neighbour of #555, filled the same year, but it spent its life in sherry wood rather than American oak. That gives a darker, fruitier style, with dried fruit and spice over the distillery's malty core. The distillery released a small run of 1988 casks in 2013 and 2014, each bottled at 46% so the older spirit stays soft and easy to drink.
Tasting Profile
- Nose: Dried fruit, sherry spice and orange peel, with malt and old oak.
- Palate: Rounded and warming. Fruit cake, dates and cinnamon, then polished wood.
- Finish: Long, with dried fruit, a little clove and gentle tannin.
Serving & Food
Pour at room temperature into a copita and sip it neat. At 46% there is no need for water. It goes well with dried figs and blue cheese, Christmas cake or braised pork belly.
How to Enjoy
Drinkers who like a gentle sherry-cask malt and want pre-shutdown Mars from a different cask to the bourbon-oak 1988s.
Product Details
Distillery: Mars Shinshu (now Mars Komagatake)
Country: Japan
Region: Miyada, Nagano
Category: Single cask Japanese single malt whisky
Vintage: 1988
Bottled: 2014
Age: 26 years
Cask: Sherry cask #568
Edition Size: 498 bottles
ABV: 46%
Volume: 700mL
About the Distillery
The 1988 spirit came off Shinshu's original pot stills, whose shape followed a design by Kiichiro Iwai, the adviser who first helped Hombo Shuzo into whisky.
When the distillery modernised in 2014, it had Miyake Seisakusho build replacement stills to the same outline, one for the first distillation and one for the second, so the house character would carry on. Casks from 1988 are a direct link to the first generation of those stills.
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