Yamazaki For The Rest Of Us?

jmhbpc · August 6 2018 at 11:08PM

Hi,

I have had the good fortune of tasting Yamazaki 18 Year, and I have stashed bottle or two of the Yamazaki 12,

having obtained them when they were around and affordable.

But it appears that any affordable Yamazaki has all but disappeared from the U.S. market.

Is this basically the reality now for this distillery's offerings, in the U.S.?

The 18 is probably now even higher than the $800 or so, than is was a few months ago. And

has completely disappeared in my area.

I do see that in Japan there appears to be a few offerings, including Limited Editions, that are

almost affordable, but these are not available legitimately in the U.S. market anyway.

Is Yamazaki now, simply an uber-elite, out of reach, whisky for us newbies in the U.S.?

Or, perhaps, might the distillery be working on batches to be made more generally available in the future ...

Any hope for us Japanese Whisky Fans for more Yamazaki??

DramTasticVoyage · August 7 2018 at 4:16PM

@jmhbpc Japanese whisky only recently came into the global consciousness. Their whisky became wildly popular much faster than they originally anticipated. The age statement whisky coming out of Japan is all but completely depleted. You wont see much of it for years to come as they have to re-age new batches. I'm sure this time around, they will make extra to meet their new found demand around the world. Hold onto those bottles! Someone will pay good money for them! There are still some aged bottles floating around that have not sold yet, but they will all be gone very soon. Aficionados will be pulling out their wallets to fork out some good cash for what's left of it.