Sakurao Limited Edition Mizunara

Mizunara oak is the most difficult wood a distiller can choose. Japanese trees grow slowly and crookedly, the staves leak more readily than European oak, and what the wood gives back is unlike any other barrel: sandalwood, incense and a dry perfumed spice. Sakurao ages this limited edition in it at 47%, on seventeen botanicals gathered from the land and the sea around Hiroshima.

Citrus · Woody · Limited Edition · Spicy · Floral

The recipe is unusually wide before the wood is considered at all. Citrus comes from three directions: lemon straight and sharp, navel orange rounder, and Kawane yuzuYuzuA Japanese citrus with an intense scent between mandarin, grapefruit and lemon, and very little juice.Glossary floral and more complicated than either. Cherry blossom adds a delicate almond-scented note above them. Then the strange ingredients arrive. Wasabi contributes a brief, clean heat that vanishes rather than lingering, red and green perilla give their minty aniseed character, hinoki cypress a resinousResinousAn aroma reminiscent of pine or fir resin. It is juniper's signature, due to compounds such as pinene.Glossary cedar note, and black camphor something cooler still. Oyster shells are the maritime element, and they read as a fine mineral salinity rather than as anything of the sea. Hiroshima juniper, juniper leaves, green tea, ginger and pepper leaf fill in behind. Over all of it the Mizunara lays its incense warmth, and that combination is what makes this taste like nowhere else.

Wood this distinctive should not be drowned. A short measure over one substantial cube is the honest introduction, and a few minutes let the incense pull away from the citrus. Mixed, the tonic should stay neutral and the pour firm; a strip of yuzu or lemon peel is the only garnish worth adding. Skip tonic altogether if the barrel is what you came for. Seventeen botanicals from one prefecture, and a barrel nobody outside Japan finds easy to obtain. It ends woody, citric and saline.