One of Japan's southernmost distilleries, Helios Distillery, has released their first new whisky in several years: KURA The WHISKY Rum Cask Finish.
Let's be clear: this is a Rum Cask Finish of imported malt whisky from Scotland. I don't even remember the last time Helios released a whisky they distilled themselves. We did see "Reki" in late 2016, but I don't think Helios distilled that either. In fact, I thought they stopped their whisky production altogether! This bottle backs that up. Maybe they were inspired to try a rum cask finish by last year's Nikka Rum Wood Finish releases.
Helios has limited the first-release run to 2000 bottles, priced at around 5000 yen each. It's also available now from Musashiya.
Whiskey Richard is the founder of nomunication.jp, and has been saying he has lived in Japan for ten years for the past four years. He enjoys drinking basically anything except straight-up Campari.