Ah the Kakubin... With its squat, turtle shell patterned square bottle and round yellow label, is the most ubiquitous of all Japanese whiskies. You can find it everywhere in Japan, from convenience stores and supermarkets, to chain restaurants across the country. It is literally everywhere, no joke! It comes in tiny, pocket sized 180ml bottles, to gargantuan 4l bottles that are so large you could stick them on top of a water cooler for some very relaxing Suntory times!
But how did this unpretentious yellow labeled blend in a squat little bottle come into being?
The Kakubin was the brainchild of Shinjiro Torii, Suntory's larger-than-life founder, and was the first commercially successful Japanese whisky. It singlehandedly made Suntory(or Kotobukiya, as it was known back then) a household name across the island nation during the pre and post WW2 years. It's not a quality whisky by any stretch of the imagination, but it was never meant to be. In the early days, the two founding fathers of Japanese whisky; Masataka Taketsuru and the aforementioned Shinjiro Torii, worked together at Yamazaki to produce a quality, Scotch style whisky known as Shirofuda. While Shirofuda was Japans first true whisky, it was an unmitigated disaster and the heavy, smoky style did not suit the Japanese palate of 1929 at all. The two founding fathers soon parted ways in the fallout from this failure, with Taketsuru going north to Hokkaido to found the Yoichi distillery and Suntory's great rival, Nikka. Torii on the other hand, decided to go back to the basics and start over by making a lighter, softer whisky that both appealed to the palate of his contemporary countrymen and women, and could also be used as a mixer with soda water. This new mass-market blend was the Kakubin and was released in 1937, just 8 years after the failure of Shirofuda, to resounding success.
As this whisky was birthed at Yamazaki, it does contain some malt from there. However much of the whisky that goes into this blend is actually produced at the sprawling Chita grain distillery near Nagoya.
Vitals:
ABV: 40%
Colour: Gold
Chill-filtered: Yes
Nose: Opens with cream and brown sugar, with some honey and an almost pale lager like maltiness hanging around behind the cream. The intense creaminess breaks apart into vanilla, granola and a floral aroma not dissimilar to wildflowers.
Palate: A mild peppery spice initially appears, followed by a heavy dollop of vanilla ice-cream. However it opens into very sweet honey, green apples, green grapes and sugar coated cornflakes. Wood tannins from the oak introduce a touch of bitterness, bringing some semblance of balance into the mix.
Finish: freshly harvested muscat grapes and oak give a pleasantly bittersweet medium length finish.
Conclusion:
Holy-cow-on-a-fencepost. This subverted my expectations completely.
Usually with bottom shelf whiskies, there's always this weird, metallic grainy note that dominates either the palate or the finish. The Kakubin has none of that. It's sweet, inoffensive and extremely easy to drink. It's not terribly complex, but you'd be hard pressed to find a bottom shelf buy that is as well knit together and wholesome as this one. It is supposed to be a highball whisky, but by jove, this is an excellent sipper!
한국어 시음평:
향: 크림, 흑설탕, 꿀, 페일 라거 몰트 → 바닐라, 그래놀라, 야생화
맛: 후추, 바닐라 아이스크림 → 꿀, 풋사과, 청포도, 콘플레이크,오크
끝맛: 샤인머스캣, 오크. 피니시가 달콤쌉쌀해요.
결론: 달콤하고 마시기가 쉬워요.
Review by Glasgowhisky
2020/11/07
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