Glendalough 13 Year Mizunara Finished Single Malt

Glendalough 13 Year Mizunara Finished Single Malt Whiskey

We will be tasting Glendalough 13 Year Mizunara Finished Single Malt for our fourth Irish Whiskey of the week.  

Initially, my good friend mentioned this bottle to me as something he had heard from his local liquor store guy.  I remembered reading about this bottle in Whisky Advocate so I bought one the next time I saw one in my own local store.  I figured I would crack it when my friend visited next….but things kept coming up and then COVID happened and well, this is my long winded way of saying that this bottle has collected dust, unopened on my shelf for 3+ years now.  What better time to crack it open than for my debut St. Patty’s Day Week of Tastings?

ABV: 46%

How it smells…..cedar sweater chest? (it’s not cedar, but it ain’t oak either.  See Final Thoughts), a bit musty, grassy, peach skins, citrus

How it tastes….a bit sweet at first but then something funky happens.  Ends in some cocoa but a more bitter baking chocolate without sugar with a long (really long) drying medicinal finish (maybe wormwood?) and a bit of peppery spice.

Price..$85 - $120….I honestly can’t remember but Google told me this was the range.

Rating….🥃🥃🥃(🥃)

Final thoughts…..If you haven’t caught on from my extensive use of parentheses thus far in this review, this was one of the most difficult tastings that I have done.  Not that it was bad, because it really wasn’t despite all the gibberish I wrote above, it was just so damn unique that it is really hard to explain.  

While every whiskey likes to claim that it is “unique,” this one actually fits the definition of the word.  I have gone through a number of bottles of Glendalough’s Double Barrel Whiskey core product to know that whatever this release tasted like, it was heavily influenced by the Mizunara oak.  So let’s start there.

Mizunara oak is Japanese oak, or to be specific (and scientific!) Quercus mongolica.  Whisky Advocate wrote a nice article about oak’s influence on whiskey and included a bit on Mizunara so instead of regurgitating it, just click here.  The short of it is that it’s quite different from the traditional vanilla flavors of American oak or the savory spicy flavors of European oak.  After doing my own tasting (and failing at it), I kept coming across the more apt description of sandalwood as the wood flavor/aroma of this whiskey (and Mizunara aged whiskey in general).  When I did my tasting I erroneously thought of cedar (but knew it wasn’t cedar!) just that it was a familiar wood scent that was atypical to any whiskey tasting I have ever done.  Thus, sandalwood is the proper note on this.

But the “oddity”, for lack of a better word, of this tasting didn’t stop at the obscure wood note.  There’s something herbal about it that’s like a wormwood note or perhaps eucalyptus or tea tree oil….something a bit medicinal and a bit antiseptic-like.  I haven’t found a lot of specifics on this yet, moreso, people generally refer to this simply as “incense” or according to Kaiyo, a Japanese whisky maker, it’s the oriental incense kara, the likes of which I am ignorant of.  But at least I was on the right track I suppose! 

Overall, I like this for its uniqueness.  This is certainly not an everyday sipper but it’s exotic and I can see myself liking it more and more as I dip back into it.  I did this tasting after a day of tasting the Teeling Pot Still and Yellow Spot 12, so quite a different set of flavors and it was a bit of a befuddling shock.  But I found this to be a great challenge, I’m just not sure if I really like it or if it makes me so curious that I want to go back to it more and more.  Honestly, when I was tasting it I felt like Brad Pitt at the end of Seven “WHAT’S IN THE BOX?!”.  

Suffice it to say, I’m giving this somewhere between a 3x 🥃 and a 4x 🥃 rating depending on what price you may find it at or whatever the hell price I actually paid for it. If you’re into trying new things, this is certainly new (or old rather since my bottle is sold old, but they do make a 7 year and a 17 year version of this). If you’re into trying exotic things, this is certainly exotic. If you don’t like to deviate from the “norm” then take a pass on this one.

Japanese Mizunara Oak…..try making a stave out of that trunk!