Big Peat Mizunara Cask - whisky that tastes heavenly. Blog post by Jan Autzen Laursen

Big Peat has become one of my favourite bottlings in recent years. Douglas Laing, the people behind it, are among those in the trade making genuinely lovely blended whisky. They have always been a guarantee of good quality across everything they put out, and with their remarkable regional malts there is real flavour to be had.

Big Peat is recognisable from the slightly windswept Scotsman with dark beard and hair who adorns the bottles. At Christmas he typically gets a festive costume, his hair dyed white and the strength nudged up. Whether that is so we can wash away all the Christmas elves or to celebrate the end of the year is hard to say, but Big Peat certainly has a Christmas dram of its own.

The one that has landed on my desk is a 10 year old Mizunara Cask, released to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Douglas Laing. An interesting bottling I have been circling for a while, though a rather hefty price tag has kept me hesitant.

Mizunara cask - what is that, exactly? I know almost everything about the various cask types we typically see here in Europe, but what sort of beast is Mizunara?

Let us establish one thing: Mizunara is a grotesquely expensive cask from Japan. The tree has to be at least 200 years old before it can be felled, and at the moment a cask costs around 6,000 dollars.