Have the Glen Grant 15 year instead of the Hakushu 12 year. I remember when the Hakushu 12 year old was abundant on store shelves for $60, and it tasted like it should cost much more. I recently had the opportunity to try a newer bottling of the Hakushu 12 year at a decent $21 for 1.5 oz pour, and I was disappointed. If you find Hakushu 12 on store shelves these days, it’s around $200, but now it tastes like it should be back to $60. You know what I found marked down to $60 recently? This Glen Grant 15 year batch strength 1st edition from 2018. The box was dusty. And there are plenty more dusty boxes of these at liquor shops. Why does nobody care about Glen Grant? Jim Murray awarded some Yamazaki whisky of the year way back when, and the entire world lost their damn minds not only for Yamazaki, but for all whisky from Japan. Jim Murray had been calling Glen Grant 18 the best Scotch whisky for years, and nobody formed a line to snatch up the Glen Grant 18, or any other Glen Grant. Glen Grant makes awesome single malts, and this one is an exceptional example. 50% ABV is my favorite ABV - it is simply the sweet spot. And pure ex-bourbon maturations are my favorite type of maturation - it simply lets the spirit do the talking, and you don’t get that creeping feeling that fancy shenanigan casks are being used to hide flaws. This beauty is meditatively precise in its flavors, and absolutely reminds me of the glory days of the Hakushu 12 year and Japanese whisky in general. The notes are vanilla, graham crackers, lemon, lime, hay, tea, fennel, cloves, and just the right touch of bitter spicy oakiness. This is more Hakushu than Hakushu, which I believe is slightly polluted by a touch of peat and sherry influence. This is Scotch whisky in such a pure, beautiful form; it is THE TRUTH. Look here, I believe Chivas Regal is absolute garbage (because they clearly use crap grain whisky in their blends to add volume and profit margins), but the backbone single malt in their blends, Glen Grant, is an underappreciated treasure. I am going to paraphrase Tom Cruise’s character from The Last Samurai: They are an intriguing distillery. From the moment they wake, they devote themselves to the perfection of a clean ex-bourbon maturation. I have never seen such discipline. This bottle; bottles from this distillery, should not be commonplace on shelves. They deserve the rabid acclaim that Japanese whisky received after a Jim Murray award. It should be that if I am lucky enough to behold a bottle on a shelf, I weep in joy. This bottle should cost what a bottle of batch strength Yamazaki 15 year costs: 3 million dollars.