Nikka Yoichi Yoichi SMWS 116.18 Amazing toffee, honey sweetness

My wife and I recently went to our first Scotch Malt Whisky Society tasting which was very very cool.

We'd gone through quite a different distilleries at this point, having tried Glenmorangie, Glen Moray, Caol Ila, Aultmore, a lovely Glenmorangie new make spirit and a very nasty industrial grade caramel coloring.

We'd been at this for over three hours and had been having a very good time hanging out with some of our whisky friends located in Perth.

We'd learned about different distilleries in Scotland and now we'd moved to information about some Japanese distilleries.

This must mean our next distillery tasting will be Japanese!!

Beautiful dark gold color, probably the darkest whisky we've tried tonight, and we're just informed that this whisky is also the oldest we're trying tonight, coming in at 18 years old.

The cellarmaster gives us permission to remove the covers off the glencairns and nose the whisky.

Sweet!

So I remove the cover from my whisky and all I can say is . . . WOW.

Bloody Wow even!

Peat, pine, leaves, butterscotch, coffee, toffee candies, liquorice, dark ripe fruits, toast, band aids, banana, almonds, biscuits, oh my sweet baby jebus this is FREAKING complex!

More and more aromas, so freaking complex!

This is easily a whisky I could spend an hour nosing, just nosing, not tasting.

SO COMPLEX!

Eventually though it was time to take a sip.

Wow, just wow!

Strong coffee flavors immediately come through, black coffee, sugared coffee, mocha, toffee, pine nuts and sweet candy .

Lovely, complex little whisky.

The finish is long, so very long with a beautiful balance between oak bitterness and sweet whisky.

And now for the kicker, the 64.4% ABV which for most people should have lots of alcohol burn, but their is none on this sexy bad boy!

Now to talk about the bad thing, the price.

This oh so sexy Japanese whisky, this whisky, which once again proves that the Japanese can kick whisky butt with the best of them, is sadly not cheap or easy to find.

Only 410 bottles produced worldwide and running a hefty $329 a bottle.

But god this whisky makes me want to run out and buy a bottle of it. I've just got to convince my wife not to kill me for doing so!

Find where to buy Nikka Yoichi whisky