KAMIKI
Kamiki Blended Malt Whisky is a brand new Japanese whisky finished in cedar casks
Burkay Adalig – Erhan Özden
For Turkish version please click. KAMIKI Blended Malt Whisky is a brand new Japanese whisky. It creates great excitement not only due to the fact that it’s the first whisky to be finished in Japanese Cedar casks, but also because of its beautiful bottle & logo designed by a successful Turkish designer Erhan Özden. Erhan and I met last week had a great chat, tasted Kamiki and talked about the creative process behind this award winning design.
The whisky is inspired by the ancient capital of Japan, Nara, which holds many temples from the 8th century. Omiwa Shrine in Nara is one of Japan’s oldest Shinto shrines. It is considered as the shrine of the Japanese alcohol producers. Most well-known alcohol producer families are in Nara and these families have a centuries-old tradition of producing alcohol for Omiwa. Kamiki is no different.
Kamiki’s first and only expression is a blended malt. We do not know the exact distillery where it comes from but the producer states that “rare Japanese malt whiskies and finest malt whiskies from the rest of the world” are married to create Kamiki. The name KAMIKI comes from the breezes coming from Mount Miwa, the Mountain of the God. KAMI” means “GOD” and “IKI” means “BREATH”. The family has a Samurai background, therefore the Japanese sword “katana” is chosen as a design element. The swords cutting the logo in 3 pieces is a beautiful little detail on the bottle
Highest quality pure spring water from Japan is used in the production process and most important differentiating factor for this whisky is the final finish in Yoshino Sugi, most commonly known in English as the “Japanese Cedar” which is indigenous to Japan.
Kamiki belongs to Osaka based company Yoshino Spirits. Yoshino already has a whisky portfolio with other Japanese whisky brands like Mars Maltage Cosmo & Iwai. The company also has sake, gin and brandy.
Kamiki is available in selected cocktail bars in Osaka, it will soon be launched in many European countries and USA.
KAMIKI Blended Malt Whisky Tasting Notes
Kamiki Blended Malt is bottled at 48%ABV as a non chill filtered NAS whisky
Nose: Sweet and perfumy nose reminiscent of bourbons, honey, honeycomb and menthol most probably due to the influence of cedar casks, ripe bananas, vanilla, sweet glue and white soap notes with the addition of water
Palate: Dense, thick and mouth covering, pretty sweet, mint covered chocolates (After Eight), spicy palate with cinnamon and muscat
Finish: Medium to long finish, sweet finish that lingers more on the back of the tongue, milk chocolate, feels like I ate a mouthful of highly roasted hazelnuts
Score: 89
KAMIKI is quite new but it already had received some awards among which there are two IWSC awards, one Silver for the whisky and one Bronze for the packaging design. Congratulations Erhan Ozden!
- 2017 America Wine and Spirits Wholesalers Association –SILVER Award
- 2017 Packaging of The World, gallery select for inspirational whisky design.
- 2017 The DieLine, gallery select for inspirational whisky design.
- 2017 IWSC Japanese Whisky–SILVER Award
- 2017 IWSC –Packaging Design BRONZE Award
- 2017 Global Spirit Awards – Gold Medal
I summarized the IWSC 2017 awards in a previous post
For more information on KAMIKI please follow their social media accounts and the website
Instagram: www.instagram.com/kamiki_japanese_whisky
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KamikiWhisky/
