Prices
Prices and stock come from each retailer's website. Check with the store before you buy.
More from this distillery: All Shinobu whiskies and prices
About
What it is
A newborn release from Shinobu Distillery in Niigata. Newborn is the term Japanese distilleries use for their own new make bottled before it reaches three years in cask, which is the minimum age for the spirit to be legally called whisky. So this is the distillery showing its hand early rather than a finished product.
Where it comes from
This matters, because it's the opposite of the rest of the Shinobu range. The Shinobu and The Shin blends are built from whisky sourced around the world and finished in mizunara in Japan, which the producer states openly. A newborn, by definition, is the distillery's own spirit from its own stills in Niigata.
It can't meet the Japan Spirits and Liqueurs Makers Association standard, but for a straightforward reason: it isn't old enough to be whisky at all. That's a different situation to a blend containing imported stock, and worth separating in your head.
How it's made
Shinobu Distillery received its whisky licence around 2017 and sits in Niigata, on the Sea of Japan, a region known for snowfall, rice and sake, and for the soft water that underpins all three. Master blender Ken Usami came from brewing. Newborn releases are usually bottled at higher strength from a small number of casks, so cask type and time in wood vary from one to the next.
What to expect
Young, cereal-forward and raw, with malt sweetness and whatever the cask has managed to give in under three years. Newborns are interesting rather than good in the conventional sense. They tell you what the distillate is like before oak covers it, which is exactly why people buy them.
How it compares
Against the Shinobu blends, this is the only one that's actually made in Niigata. Against other Japanese newborns, from Kanosuke or Nagahama, it's the same exercise: an early look at a distillery that doesn't have mature stock yet.
