Blended Whisky | 51% ABV

Accessible, big ABV whisky from our friends in Japan

There’s something altogether more debilitating with a whisky hangover than any other form; a day waster of epic magnitude.

It goes without saying that drinking responsibly is of absolute importance. No one here, reading this or taking part in the general whisky enthusiast sphere, sets out to drink to excess - it can be really dangerous and, if not monitored, fall quickly into life-altering. But sometimes there comes an evening, typically when entertaining people who are just getting into whisky, that has the tendency to make me want to show them everything about whisky, all at once. It was an evening like this that caused me to look askance at a bottle of Nikka From The Barrel, like it had called my mum a bad word.

There’s an old adage that goes something like: “Wine before beer means ‘oh dear`”, and despite not adhering to this principle for the simple reason I don’t drink beer, the saying extends to grape and grain too. For some unknown reason drinking beer/grain spirits before wine, well, that’s fine. Don’t ask me why - maybe Tyree has some scientific insight he can bestow upon us. We started with a bottle of wine with our meal (between three of us), and then quickly lurched over to whisky. Even though it started great, it certainly didn’t end well, but the audience for the evening did become newly cast whisky exciters so for that I can be proud. I kicked off my “educational tour” with some integrity malts: Arran 10, Lindores MCDXCIV and Lochlea First Edition, all great whiskies to show very efficiently what whisky can offer to those unfamiliar with its greatness.

Unfortunately for me there’s a saying in whisky I’ve learned during my short time as a whisky exciter, and it’s: “Well, if you liked that, then…” and is usually accompanied with a quick walk over to the whisky collection to grab another bottle. I said it quite a lot this fateful evening, moving from those 46% malts into some of Alistair Walker’s Infrequent Flyers range, which are all very high ABV whiskies. Then on to some smokers: Ardbeg 10 and the Wee Beastie. Oh, the fun we had and the newbies were really enjoying the process, moving from glass to glass and discovering whisky with wide eyes and affirmative noises. Flagons of water were delivered between each glass and we were gulping it down at a rate of 10 parts to 1. “Got to stay hydrated - rule number one”, auld Doog said. Silly auld Doog.

Then I remembered there was a bottle of Nikka, a world whisky no less, sitting unopened in the cupboard from Christmas - a gift from my girls. “Well, let’s get that cracked open”, for there’s not a world whisky on the table just yet. Oh and while I’m at it, I’ll bring this Springbank with me too. Why not - there wasn’t a Campbeltown on the table either, and if we’re going into that region we should start with the elusive yet lauded 10 year old, right? Right. They were both opened and both enjoyed before the time was suddenly realised and we all headed to bed, mostly in angular trajectories.

The quantities of water that would on any other night keep me awake shuffling noisily to the toilet to dehydrate, didn’t happen such was the bodily shutdown that followed our educational session. But when the 7am alarm went off in the following morning, it was with a groaning start I realised just how miserable my day was going to be. I sat up slowly and immediately lay down again. The room wasn’t swinging which was key to the retention of my insides, but my head was throbbing and I felt utterly drained of life. I managed to bounce my way into the shower room to begin my ablutions, enduring a very treacherous lean-to showering experience - me leaning - before withering downstairs to stand, motionless, staring into the middle distance. Our guests appeared, frustratingly unaffected by the evening’s frivolities and sat down with great spirits ready for their porridge. Which I was meant to have made already.

I did make it, semi-successfully and threw it on to the table, excused myself and headed back upstairs, where I got back into bed fully clothed and immediately fell asleep. It was my wife who awoke me 30 minutes later when the guests were departing to ask why I was in bed again and not downstairs delivering the very basics of polite hospitality. I couldn’t even muster the energy to reply, instead rising up like Frankenstein’s monster and managing some form of good manners.

The rest of the day was spent sitting at my desk and continuing my quest into deep mind-space. I did literally zero anything. I breathed in and out. I grunted at colleagues and then came home via the same friend-taxi that I summoned in the morning, to deliver me into work. A colossal waste of a day, and unbelievable levels of energy depletion. All that was left to do after dinner was go back to bed and hope that the next day I’d have a semblance of functionality returned to me. Because not only was my wife apoplectic at my total dereliction of duty with our guests, but even more enraged at my roping of others into my misery. Let it be known that I uttered the immortal phrase that day: “I’m not drinking whisky for a while.”

Review

Nikka From The Barrel, 51% ABV.
Around £45 for a 50cl bottle and widely available

Three days later I was still feeling the ripples of that evening but my faculties had mercifully returned. I was able to consider what happened - how the evening had progressed like most other whisky night experiences, with multiple drams of multiple ABVs and provenances. I didn’t drink excessive amounts of whisky either - my memory of the evening was intact and we were drinking litres of water besides. What could it be that caused my soul to evaporate from my body so devastatingly the next day? Well, there was only one new (to me) whisky in the mix that night, and it was the Nikka Whisky From the Barrel.

Poor Nikka. A dinky little thing it is too, dressed in sharp clothing. I’ve known of this bottle for a long time even before my whisky exciter days began, because it was always kicking about shops and magazines. A dumpy square glass bottle with metal cap, fine Japanese paper label and simple black writing. It was appearing on social media feeds from people gushing about their week and how they were settling down to a hard-earned dram or two. Yeah, it’s safe to say I fancied trying it for a while and had clearly spoken of it out loud.

I’d tried this whisky very briefly at one of our two successful whisky club meets and I think I liked it, but there were other bottles on the table that evening that I was more excited by, and spent most of my time with Glenturret and Bruichladdich. My open bottle of Nikka would sit in the cupboard, where it was shoved on the delicate morning after safely out of sight for a long time because fair or not, the culprit for whisky-gate of mid-2022 was deemed to be the Nikka Whisky From The Barrel.

With loads of time and whisky under the bridge I’ve looked to the Nikka for a dram and wavered, questioning if I’m being irrational and just need to get a proper feel for it, or if it actually does make me feel awful. A similar out-of-body experience happened with the Cadenhead’s Tomatin warehouse tasting tour, giving me horrible nightmares. But despite my fears, the Tomatin didn’t have a magic key to unlock the upside-down; it’s by extension of that logic that the Nikka shouldn’t have a key to hit the energy dump switch. Who knows why our bodies react to things, whisky or not - even fatigue, happiness or grief feeds into the way we perceive and react to things. So I thought it was time to get this bottle out from the dark corner it had been lurking in, and assess it from the perspective of a fresh palate - not from the tail-end of an evening that ran the gamut of everything from Arran 10 to cask strength Ben Nevis.

Nose

Sharp yet sweet - a varnish or oil based paint. Big on the oak - cedarwood saunas and flashes of tart cherry. Hairspray and very subtle bread notes. The open door whiff of an oak-lined coffee shop. A slightly sour note - yoghurt perhaps, but quickly back to warm welcoming hard toffee. For some reason a freshly painted, oak floored, new-build house springs to mind. Sweaty squash court.

Palate

Powerful. The varnish theme continues. Oodles of lovely oaky toffee, tingly tongue and cinnamon spice. A funky, smoky note appears the longer the whisky is sitting and the sweetness amplifies too. Nice pops of black pepper. With water I feel like the whole experience is rounded over a bit too much, so I prefer to keep it at full speed. Sweaty squash courts make it on to the palate when it’s at max ABV, and for that I am thankful.

The Dregs

It’s on purpose I mention Ben Nevis, for this Nikka Whisky From The Barrel is reported to be made up of a lot of Ben Nevis too. I won’t get into the whys and wherefores, because I don’t know enough about it to speak with authority but it’s accepted that a lot of Japanese whisky used to be (still is?) made up of a high proportion of Scotch whisky, imported and vatted with some Japanese malt and called Japanese whisky. The Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association (JSLMA) has laid out new rules that dictate what constitutes a Japanese whisky and what doesn’t. You can spend your time in far worse ways than watching Kanpai Planet on YouTube, a channel dedicated to the Japanese whisky scene. There’s even a “Nikka Whisky From the Barrel - the ultimate guide” episode, which gives great insight not just into the whisky composition, but that it costs £19 to buy from supermarkets in Japan.

This is good whisky. It beats the experience of a lot of things in my whisky stash, from Dailuaine and Blair Athol Flora & Fauna, to GlenDronach 12 and by a country mile Aberlour Triple Cask. It delivers a really delicious gathering of expected toffees and oaks, but other things like coffee and rubber, and red fruits as well. Even endearing images of me accompanying my dad to badminton on a Wednesday evening at the local school with sweaty squash courts flashing in my mind's eye - the weirdly rubberised, salty, cedar wood scent only found in school gymnasiums.

There’s a reason this won Blended Whisky of the Year at the 2022 Online Scotch Whisky Awards and for around £40-£45, this is a very good whisky, especially for those getting deeper into the whisky passion and fancy a bit more potency in their drams. It’s delivered at 51% ABV which offsets the 50cl bottle capacity enough to not be an issue. It goes without saying that this whisky wasn’t the culprit for my descent into abject misery and despite the reluctance to drink it for so long afterwards, I’m glad I came back to it. Nikka Whisky From The Barrel is the ideal dram for a casual evening, delivering a really interesting experience with enough grip, detail and depth to earn a place on my permashelf.

Score: 6/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC

Other opinions on this:

Kanpai Planet (full video)

Whiskybase (there are literally dozens of this entry in WB)

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