Nikka Coffey Grain Whisky (700 ml)

When Masataka Taketsuru transferred a pair of Coffey continuous stills — originally built by Blairs Ltd. of Glasgow and installed at Nikka's Nishinomiya plant — to the Miyagikyo distillery in Sendai's forested Hirose River valley, he gave Japanese grain whisky a production anchor unlike anything else in the category. Miyagikyo's water source, drawn from the Zao Mountain Range, is among the softest and lowest-hardness of any Japanese distillery, a condition that keeps the corn-dominant spirit clean and unencumbered through distillation. The Coffey still's gentle, continuous process preserves the grain's inherent sweetness and creamy texture — congeners that a pot still would strip away — while the humid, cool forest microclimate of the valley moderates maturation. Aging proceeds in ex-bourbon American oak casks (re-filled, remade, and re-charred), which layer vanilla and coconut without overwhelming the grain's delicate character. What makes this expression categorically unusual is the Coffey still itself: these are antique continuous stills of Scottish manufacture operating inside a Japanese distillery, producing a grain whisky with a textural richness and aromatic fidelity to raw corn that modern column stills rarely achieve. Bottled as a standalone grain expression, it exposes a component that most blenders keep hidden — the sweet, waxy backbone that anchors Nikka's From the Barrel blend.