15ml / ¥600 @ Isetan.

Appearance: Amber brown.

Nose: Campfire, caramel, butter, iodine, malt sugar. Very malty.

Palate: Sweet caramel, toffee, smoke. Simple and very sweet.

Finish: Peppery, smoky, honey and caramel.

Overall: Sweet and simple. Does show potential but the hype and prices already surrounding this are frankly ridiculous.

The nose offers an extinguished campfire, peat, solvent, a hint of lemon, some herbs and seaweed, malt and spray. It's a little simple and a little shy to be remarkable but it works. The presence of fruit would have been welcome. In the mouth the alcohol is very well integrated, with a warm and suave entry into the smoked malt, some undefined fruits (also shy). Final on bitter herbaceous notes and smoke. The whole could make one think of a young caol ila. It's fine, well done but in my opinion too simple and boring to justify the asking price.

Impressive distillery from Hokkaido. They used Japanese peat from Northern Hokkaido. Excellent and unique character of the spirit. When you followed the path of Akkeshi, you feel all the passion they put into their products. The new make was already excellent and each foundation bottle showed the great potential of and how good they can handle maturation in different types of casks (ex-bourbon, ex-sherry, mizunara).

Now Kanro - Edition No. 1 comes with a triple maturation (ex-bourbon, ex-sherry, mizunara). Pleasant fruity notes (strawberry!!!) and an intense impact of peat. It's not the cold, dry and medicinal peat like Ardbeg, Laphroaig... it feels a bit like very fruity Caol Ila or gentlemen Ledaig.

Of course, Chichibu The Peated is more into the face, but remember, Chichibu uses imported peated malt from Islay. So Akkeshi is more based to the natural character of Hokkaido peat, which has less ppm, but much more fruity notes.

Bottle design and packaging is outstanding, no doubt this will be a game changer in Japan, Chichibu, Shizuoka and now Akkeshi.

RRP JP 15.000Y / EU 250 EUR