Karuizawa 1984, cask #3663 (Speciality Drinks)

Karuizawa. the stuff whisky geek,lovers and aficionados dream about (they can hardly afford it nowadays), and even after all the hype is gone, Karuizawas are quite amazing drams, you have to admit that. A few months ago Speciality Drinks (a sister company of the TWE, owned by the same famous Sukhinder) announced it was bottling a cask from 1984, and due to the high demand for  ANY Karuizawa , they are going to conduct a raffle to all those who sign up for a bottle, and those who “win” can then PAY and buy one. 2014 yes, true. Anyways, I did not sign for that email, but it was quite funny as Billy from the TWE who managed the entire thing got quite a few emails from the same people under different email addresses in order to increase their chances of winning, it was all a funny affair. I have no idea why i did not enter (probably cause i could not afford a bottle, original price was about 400 EUR! ), but luckily my mate Sjoerd entered with the intent of winning and buying a bottle for a bottle share with a few whisky friends. he got in, and then sold us samples at cost price, which was a great way of tasting it and not robbing a bank. So thanks mate for being one step ahead, and for sharing this awesome stuff with us. I’ve tasted this one a few times (100 ml samples are nice) and forgot to post notes. Here we go:

Karuizawa 1984 (cask #3663 for TWE) , 56.8% abv , € 400 (sold out!)KaruizawaTWE1984-NONJATTA

Nose: This is clearly a wonderful nose: a lot of oak influence, but what a fragrant sexy kind of oak it is: Old, Hints of smoke and cigar humidor. Lots of sherry cask influence too. Fortified wine. Balsamic. Plum jam. Thick with a few mint leaves to create one heck of a complex nose. Heavenly.

Palate: Great mouthfeel. Very approachable. Dried fruit and smoky tobacco leaves. Orange bits , plums, peaches. Chocolate and bitter oak. A peppery tang too. Sweet and savoury. With a nice amount of oak.

Finish: Sweet orange marmalade with  traces of smoke tobacco. Dry. Oak.

This is a superb dram, one of the better Karuizawas i had in the same league give or take as the other 1984 cask 3692 , (if we take out the 1964 one I’ve had, which is in its own league).

Score: 93/100

3 thoughts on “Karuizawa 1984, cask #3663 (Speciality Drinks)

  1. I wouldn’t call the number of duplicate emails we got ‘funny’. It took me ages to go through the list and prune out the dupes. It was even less funny how many people who I know had signed up multiple times, even though they knew I was going to go through and trim the list.

    You Know Who You Are…

Leave a Reply