Macallan & Mizunara - A Match Made In Heaven?

Over the years, single malt whiskies from the Macallan Distillery have become well known for being luxurious and of very high quality, which is in part what has made many of them so collectible. They have mastered the use of ex-sherry casks, which a lot of their whiskies have been either aged or finished in.

One of Macallan's more challenging endeavours though, came around when they looked to be the first Highland Distillery to create a whisky from a single cask that had been finished in the rare, Japanese Oak, Mizunara.

Mizunara is regarded very highly in Japan and is seen as being superior to many other types of wood in whisky ageing. It is certainly a luxury, which makes it the perfect partner for a single malt such as Macallan, but using Mizunara for ageing whisky can be more than a little challenging.

Firstly, the trees do not grow straight up to the sky, they weave around in many directions, making them difficult to later make into casks, something which cannot be done until the wood is around 200 years old. This makes it an extremely expensive and even more rare wood to use.

The name 'Mizunara' translates to 'Water Oak', which is very apt as the oak has a high moisture content and is much more porous than other types of wood. For ageing whisky, this can be a huge problem and Mizunara casks are prone to high levels of leaking. It is for this reason that Mizunara aged whiskies are among the more expensive on the market.

Even with all of those issues standing in their way, Macallan still went ahead with using Japanese Oak in one of their whiskies. Collaborating with JapanWhiskys.com and the East Asia Whisky Company their hard work culminated with a beautiful 30 year old single malt.

In order to get the perfect balance between the complex whisky and mysterious oak, a team of experts from Scotland carefully monitored every step of the maturation process, which has led to the creation of only 50 bottles of this extremely unique whisky. The resulting single malt from the Macallan truly is a piece of whisky history.