@CKarmios I’m gonna plead guilty on the sandalwood incense as well...love the aroma. My mother used it after cooking certain dishes, and my college roommate used it to blanket out the weed smell. Highly effective in both cases :-)

@Scott_E @PBMichiganWolverine you can also buy sandalwood incense sticks from shops like Etsy - do not ask how I know 😜

@BeerNinjaEsq Aromas are subjective so we are probably smelling the same thing from mizunara but just calling it different things. The critical point coming out of all this is that whatever the label we put on it, this expression doesn't have much 🙁

@PBMichiganWolverine I am curious too as to the aroma. Am on the lookout. Not many Asian Indian markets by me.

@cascode @PBMichiganWolverine I've probably got about half a dozen bottles here right now that have touched Mizunara in some fashion or other, and I don't know if I've ever associated any of them with incense, but I do know what I associate with mizu. I want to revisit this bottle just to make sure my palate wasn't off last night, and compare it to a bunch of other stuff I have, but I'm inclined to suggest that this has the least Mizu influence of any bottle I currently own

"@PBMichiganWolverine looking at pricing, the word Mizunara is worth a €50 hike, nearly triple the price of the original, so yes Marketing dept is happy. @BeerNinjaEsq I think the expression is ‘a crock o’ shite’, apropos the whiskey’s origin 😀 thanks for navigating us away from this "

@BeerNinjaEsq if you’re ever curious what sandalwood smells like, go to any Asian Indian market —they have sandalwood incense.

@BeerNinjaEsq As @PBMichiganWolverine noted, if you didn't clearly detect a sandalwood or incense aroma on this then the mizunara influence is minimal, and possibly not really legit, because those aromas should definitely be present when that wood is used. I'd bet they used old refill casks that were obtained from a broker in bulk just so they could put the magic word "mizunara" on the label.

@BeerNinjaEsq yeah, doesn’t sound like much cask influence. Instead “mizunara” is used more for marketing in this case.

@Scott_E @PBMichiganWolverine The box suggests to me that only part of the whiskey was finished in the Mizunara, then blended with their normal Irish single malt. Based on taste, I feel like it might have been a small percentage. I'm on an expert on sandalwood, but I'm not picking up anything I peg to be unique or exotic here. If anything it tastes more like scotch than traditional Irish, but I'm not familiar with the regular Writers' Tears profile.

@PBMichiganWolverine @BeerNinjaEsq Nice review. I think more about informative the negative reviews where the price does not justify the quality. I wonder too if this is more marketing of the Miz casks in the sense that, “Hey, Look what we did” than taking the time to harvest better casks? Hope I am making sense.

Wondering if it was just a fast dip in the mizunara? Or bad casks, maybe over used? Normally good mizunara ( like Yamazaki’s ) has that sandalwood aroma.