Hatozaki Whisky's Newest Expression is an American Rye Finished in Mizunara

Established in 2017, Japan’s Kaikyō Distillery is still waiting for the whisky for its Hatozaki brand to mature. In the meantime, Kaikyō has relied on sourced whisky—from Japan but also from other countries—to craft its expressions, blending and finishing them in Japanese native woods.

The initial Hatozaki releases were Finest Blended and a blended malt whisky called Small Batch Pure Malt. The newest limited release, Hatozaki Omakase Third Edition, is a rye sourced from the United States. Kaikyō purchased aged barrels of American rye whiskeys from distilleries in two states. After being blended together, the liquid was re-barreled in new mizunara casks for an undisclosed period of time and then bottled at 42% ABV.

The new Hatozaki expression is noteworthy because it uses rye as a base. Few Japanese producers have worked with rye in the past—of note, Hakushu released a 100% rye single grain whisky under the Essence of Suntory banner in 2018 and Nikka used one as the base of an experimental blend some time ago. They both launched in Japan, and only a handful of bottles came to the States via the secondary market. Omakase Third Edition, on the other hand, is available only in the U.S. with a suggested retail price of $95 and a batch size of around 3,000 bottles. It will be interesting to see how some of those light and floral notes from the finishing barrel impact the rye’s profile—we’re looking forward to finding out.

For its whiskies, Hazotaki marks the labels with the "Made in Japan" and "Produced and Bottled by" statements. That might seem at odds with the liquid's American provenance, but that's been the practice in Japanese whisky for many years. Any whisky bottled in and exported from Japan is legally required to carry the “Product of Japan” mark for regulatory reasons, but the phrase doesn’t offer information about where the liquid is actually from. A Japanese producer can theoretically bottle a whisky sourced from abroad without much change to it—without proofing, blending, cask finishing, or extended aging—and call the whisky a Japanese product. The “Produced and Bottled By” statement is on Hatozaki's back label—it's the same tactic used by many American non-distiller producers to obfuscate the fact that they’re using sourced juice. While a voluntary agreement penned by a Japanese trade group in 2021 was expected to bring clarity and transparency to the category, the old labeling practices are still alive today.