Single malt Japanese whiskey from Mars Tsunuki Distillery in Kagoshima
Aged 3-4 years in first- and second-fill bourbon casks
Peat level of 3.5 ppm
A nose of lemon cake and black tea is accompanied by light smoke. Orange marmalade offers sweet and bitter citrus on the palate, deepened by buttered toast and cocoa nibs. Chocolate malt and lemon peel linger long on the finish.
Double Gold Medalist at the 2023 San Francisco World Spirits Competition
Non-refrigerated; 50% ABV
Located in the southern prefecture of Kagoshima, where the Hombo family originally hails from, Mars Tsunuki Distillery, reopened in 2016, experiences significantly more humidity and greater fluctuations in temperature than Mars Shinshu to the north. This bottling, the third release since the distillery’s reopening, certainly captures Mars Tsunuki’s progress and underscores the versatility of the Mars production range.
Some of the best whiskey on earth comes from Mars. So the distillery Mars Shinshu in Japan!
Like many of the other distilleries in Scotland, Mars has a past in a very different industry. The company started in 1872 as a cotton manufacturer. In 1909 they started making shochu, which over the next 50 years developed into a larger portfolio of sake, umeshu and fruit wines, among other things. It was not until 1949 that whiskey production began, and in 1960 it was decided to switch to a higher gear. The man to manage the boilers was Kiichiro Iwai. Iwai was no novice in the world of whisky, and 40 years earlier he had employed the famous Masataka Taketsuru, now known as “the father of Japanese whisky”. In addition to his experience, he also had a small and inconspicuous notebook, which would prove to be extremely important. In it was hidden a treasure of knowledge – it was Masataka Taketsuru’s notebook, which he had prepared during his study trip in Scotland, and when he returned home presented to Iwai as part of his report. Kiichiro Iwai used the drawings in the book to design Mars’ new boilers.
Throughout the next period, production went up and down, and Mars was characterized by the same turbulence as the rest of the Japanese whiskey industry. From 1992 and 19 years on, there was no distillation. Slowly the demand for whiskey increased again and Mars realized that the stock they had been drawing on for the last 2 decades was running out. In 2011, the boilers were fired up again. With a “clean slate” after almost 20 years of inactivity, they felt free to experiment and find exactly the recipes that would define the new Mars.
Today they use 4 different types of malt, all imported from the UK: unsmoked, lightly smoked (3.5 ppm), heavily smoked (20 ppm) and super heavily smoked (50 ppm). It is fermented with 3 different types of yeast, and a number of different casks are used for cask aging, mostly bourbon from Jack Daniel’s, but also Madeira and port casks. In addition to experimenting with different types of casks, they are also investigating the effect of different environments on storage. For example, part of the crude spirit is sent to Yakushima, which is the place with the most rainfall in the whole world. The locals say that it “rains 400 days a year”.
