Japanese Whisky - Real or Fake?

Japanese Whisky - Real or Fake?

We happened upon by chance upon a great article about Japanese whiskey. Nowadays Japanese whiskey is sometimes blended using whiskey from other countries namely Scotland. And some of the Japanese whiskey is actually not contain any whiskey at all from Japan, and it is all from Scotland. (We wonder why they bother.)

But it is hard to tell which ones are the real thing from Japan, and which ones are not. That is until we found this fantastic article on the web by a Japanese whiskey connoisseur. He has gone into great details and conducted a lot of research about Japanese whiskey. He goes by the name of 'Whiskey Richard'. And his blog is great. We recommend it greatly.

Here is the article, with a great graphic about real and fake Japanese whisky (perhaps that's unkind - maybe we should say Japanese whisky blends). 

Japanese whisky origin article from NOMUNICATION.

 Some of the Japanese whisky surprised us. We knew about Togouchi and Golden Horse already but were surprised to find out about Chiyoko, KURA the WHISKY, Hatozaki (by Akashi ), Kurayoshi, Lucky Cat by Mars Whisky, Fujisan whisky, King whisky, Hachikuma, Sapporo Whisky, Cherry, The Fujisan Japanese whisky, Fuyu and even Ao by Suntory ('world whisky' so probably has some Japanese whisky in it).

No that this means that these whiskies do not taste good. Indeed if you are using whisky from Scotland in your blend or even if you are simply re-bottling it then it will probably taste good. Scotland makes very good whiskies. :-) But just to let the consumer know what is from Japan and want is not and what is half, 30% etc from Japan and a half from other parts of the world it would be a good idea for your edification and increased knowledge to read this article about Japanese whisky.