Kaiyo The Rubi Mizunara

I had gotten into Japanese whisky early in my whisky journey. Alongside my Tomatin 12, Lagavulin 16 and Glenmorangie 10 were a whole host of Japanese whiskies, including this rice-derived Ohishi Brandy cask number that causes whiplash in conversations. But then I noticed the prices going up, transitioning from sea level, to Mount Everest, then eventually the mesosphere. Prices may have cooled off slightly but we are still solidly in the stratosphere. I stopped buying. A plethora of options from other global whisky-makers drew me away, despite my affinity for the Japanese products. 

I’ve always been impressed by Japanese culture and resiliency towards tradition and science. Being a metallurgist, I’ve got deep respect for the Japanese steel making culture. They don’t have giant ore deposits and thus rely on imports but yet they’ve mastered a deep science and somehow linked it with their culture and craftsmanship.

I’ll wager that many of you whiskyphiles have other obsessive habits or hobbies. For me, it was the connection of Japanese steel-making wizardry and their willingness to stick to traditional practices. While yes, everyone thinks of Katana swords, there are many other daily use items that rely on the same foundational practices and artistry. Several years ago, I purchased a set of father-son handmade kitchen knives. Their edge retention and beauty is something to behold, and I know that with my whetstone sharpening these will last for many decades. I’ve beat them up and they keep on shining and slicing with now signs of slowing down.

Another fascination, although one that has dwindled in recent years, has been watches. Just as whisky prices have risen, the price for watches has also spiralled upwards too. Again, being impressed with Japanese culture towards manufacturing, I was attracted to Seiko and Grand Seiko, their premium product line. Seiko is one of the very few companies who are vertically integrated.

Seiko manufacture all of their own parts in-house, including the manual and automatic winding movements, created their own spring-drive technology, and even grow their own quartz crystals in-house to a quality standard orders of magnitude higher than other manufacturers allowing them to achieve extreme precision and accuracy, and combined with a temperature sensor inside the watch to account for temperature-driven frequency drift, can result in accuracies of +/- 10 seconds per year. While I fancy the mechanical movements myself, it is stunning what they have achieved for quartz-type movements.

They then design and build their own watches in-house. You could think of it as Daftmill, growing their own barley and nurturing every step through to delivery into your glass. The vast majority of watches you will see use a cheaply made movement slapped inside a generic watch case by a “factory” (using that term loosely if you catch my drift) and blinged up with some expensive marketing and fancy colouring schemes and sold to you with a hefty markup. For me, I’ve had my trusty Seiko “Turtle” SRP-777 by my side for nearly 10 years, ticking away without any servicing of the automatic movement and still accurate to 10 sec/day too.

The cushion-back case design is ultra comfortable for those who are active and work with your hands as it doesn’t dig into your wrist, is fully water sealed for 200 metres, and has a 41-hour power supply from its automatic winding mechanism. It’s not sophisticated or fancy but a great watch. It’s been through several oceans, kids, mud, welding arcs, grinding sparks, travelling to 3 different continents, and other manners of mechanical and electromagnetic abuse and it still looks nearly as good as the day I bought it. Hell, I’m on my 4th canvas strap! I’d love to snag another Seiko or save up for a Grand Seiko but with kids and life, I’ll be hanging onto my Turtle… at the rate I’m ageing versus the watch, I’ll be passing the watch onto my kids long before it looks haggard. So back to whisky.

While remembering the past can bring up warm and fuzzy feelings, it is equally frustrating to crash back to reality. Yes, the Nikka Yoichi/Miyagikyo are consistently offering up quality and reasonably priced Japanese whiskies (thank you Nikka) however the rest of the Japanese whiskies are well and truly for the elitist folks who will very likely never read Dramface or consider the quality-for-value metric like you and I do.

So when a sale popped up, Broddy being the thrifty sort, jumped on a chance to give Japanese whisky another shot. I’ve spoken about my affinity for port casks before, and the chance to try something from Mizunara oak sealed the deal.