Hakushu 12 Year

Nose: apples, sherry, honey, oak, faint pine and smoke. Palate: caramel, vanilla, sherry moves to orange zest with oak. Finish with a lingering faint smoke. Oil mouthfeel

I think my first ever taste of this whisky was virtual. I was playing Yakuza on the PlayStation & one of the features of the game was that your character could walk into a bar & chill out with a malt & I believe that I had this & a lagavulin. So imagine my surprise when I walked into a supermarket & saw this I purchased it on the spot. This kind of reminds me of something from Speyside but with an additional stomp on the smoke button, it goes down easily and would be a good introduction whisky before moving on to something more in depth.