Prices
Prices and stock come from each retailer's website. Check with the store before you buy.
About
What it is
A blended whisky finished in mizunara, Japanese oak, from the Shin brand. Shin Group also owns Shinobu and distributes Akashi, and The Shin sits alongside Shinobu as a parallel range using the same production approach under a different name.
Where it comes from
Shin Group states that its whiskies are made by selecting stock from distilleries around the world, first matured in ex-sherry and ex-bourbon casks, then finished in mizunara in Japan. On that basis this doesn't meet the Japan Spirits and Liqueurs Makers Association standard, which requires distillation in Japan.
Worth being clear that the company isn't hiding this. It's on their own product pages. The confusion comes from retailers, who tend to shelve anything with a Japanese name and a mizunara finish under Japanese whisky without reading further.
How it's made
The mizunara finish is the identity. Japanese oak is porous, difficult to coopering work with and slow to give anything up, but it produces sandalwood, incense and coconut notes that no other wood does. A few months in it can reshape a blend that started life somewhere else entirely. The base stock comes from ex-sherry and ex-bourbon maturation, and the sources aren't named.
What to expect
Soft and aromatic. Vanilla and honey from the base casks, then the sandalwood and gentle spice mizunara brings, with a clean, fairly short finish. It reads as Japanese because of the wood rather than because of the spirit, which is precisely the point of the exercise.
How it compares
Against Shinobu Blended Mizunara, same company, same method, different label. Against Amahagan World Malt from Nagahama, Hatozaki from Kaikyo, or the Kurayoshi pure malts, you're in the same category of Japanese-finished world whisky, with varying degrees of candour about it. Shin Group is at the more open end.
