Prices
Prices and stock come from each retailer's website. Check with the store before you buy.
More from this distillery: All Kanosuke whiskies and prices
About
What it is
The 2023 annual limited edition from Kanosuke, bottled at cask strength, 59%. A departure from the previous releases: this one is built on heavily peated malt, blending peated and unpeated spirit distilled in 2018 and 2019, averaging around four to five years in cask. Non-chill filtered.
Where it comes from
Kanosuke Distillery on the Kagoshima coast, built in 2017 by shochu producer Komasa Jyozo. Single malt, distilled and matured entirely on site, no imported whisky. The distillery publishes production detail per release on its own website, which is not the norm among Japanese craft producers.
How it's made
Maturation runs across ex-bourbon barrels, sherry casks and the distillery's signature re-charred American oak casks that previously held Mellowed Kozuru, the family's cask-aged rice shochu. Those shochu casks behave close to virgin oak after the re-char, which is why young Kanosuke reads older than it is. What's new here is the peat: the earlier editions were all unpeated, so this release shows a side of the distillery that hadn't been on sale before. It took Gold at the 2024 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
What to expect
Cinnamon, pastry custard and banana on the nose with a smoky incense note behind, then a weighty palate of black tea, salted caramel and baking spice, finishing dry with a salty-sweet smoke. It's the biggest and most complex of the annual editions to that point.
How it compares
Against the 2022 Edition, that's unpeated with sherry leading, so the two are a clean peated versus unpeated comparison at similar age. Against the 2021 First and Second Editions, this is older and smokier than either. Against the core Kanosuke Single Malt at 48%, the annual editions are cask strength and harder to find. Against Akkeshi's peated malts, Kanosuke's smoke is sweeter and less maritime.
