Glenmorangie A Tale of Tokyo

Glenmorangie debuted it’s “Tale of” series in 2020, and is a highly experimental set of offerings from the Highland distillery. The selections are curated by the distillery’s Director of Whisky Creation, Dr. Bill Lumsden, and fashioned around a story or sensory experience. Dr. Bill has an exceptionally rich pallet of cask-aging whiskies at his disposal, as the distillery was one of the first in Scotland to explore cask finishing in the 1980s at his direction. The Tale of Tokyo is the fourth offering in this series, released in 2023, and is a tribute to the Japanese capital city. The whisky was partially matured in Mizunara oak casks, an oak variety (quercus crispula) native to Japan and Mongolia that has only recently started to enter into the whisky sphere, before being blended with whiskies aged in ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. 

Distillery: Glenmorangie
Region: Highland
Age: NAS
Strength: 46%
Price: $114.99
Maturation: Mizunara oak, ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks
Location: Tain
Nose: Apple, banana, green peppercorn
Palate: Black pepper, wood, vanilla, spice, peat, orange
Finish: Peat, sweet, pepper

Comments: Letting the whisky sit in your glass a bit allows the elements to focus. Water not needed.

Adam – I am really not sure what to expect when I put my nose to A Tale of Tokyo for the first time yet oddly, I’m not sure I come away from that first smell with much more knowledge. It’s a captivating nose, but not captivating like kittens playing. No, this is something behind bars at a zoo, that might have enough pointed teeth to dissuade you from petting it. But still. The apple and banana and pepper are pretty prominent but approaching again and again in different ways, from different distances and angles, rewards with different outcomes. There’s some wood and vanilla, a little floral perfume, a fluffy sweetness. It’s intriguing and inviting, layered and alluring. The palate is definitely a zag when you’re expecting a zig, as it doesn’t clearly follow from the nose. This isn’t some arbitrary cardinal rule about whiskies, however, so not exactly a demerit. But it is a surprise. Black pepper and spice mixed with a little vanilla from the wood make me wish for some of that fruit from the nose to mellow out the experience. Don’t get off the rollercoaster quite yet, however, as you pull through into the finish with a peaty, woody pepperiness that honestly left my eyebrows raised. The dominant element throughout all three layers is the pepper, which is not something I’ve seen super often. I’m not sure how much I like or dislike this, yet I respect it. This is the kind of scotch I want to share with others and really dig into everything that’s going on to it. Not because I love it but because I find it so unusual and interesting. 

Henry – A pleasant and friendly nose of apple-banana and juicy fruit. Peat enters with a big bang on the front of the palate, with pronounced black pepper and heat overwhelming the vanilla and spice. The finish fades to a balance of sweetness and peaty warmth, which lingers.

Ben – The nose leans more toward banana candy flavor in the nose, a banana Laffy Taffy kind of thing. Maybe it’s trying to tell you of the exotic glories of the ancient realm of Japan and then you taste it. You’re in a big city and they’re pushing you onto a subway and you’re crowded. You can’t move and you have to sleep. You’re in a goddamn tube. There is something syrupy vanilla in there underneath in the palate. It’s hanging out. There’s just a lot of stuff, but I do think it doesn’t hit you where you want it to. I’ve had some really good whiskies that I don’t want to drink more than one glass in a sitting. The Tale of Tokyo, if you offered me a second one, I would drink it.

Bill – This operates in that Dr. Pepper category, with like 32 different flavors. I liked what the nose was giving me but the palette is a little bit more rough than what I expected. It’s too much wasabi on your sushi, is what this is. Sweet oak particularly with vanilla. Well, and some oaks do that. And the Mizunara in particular, you know, has a unique flavor. I think that this is evident in the entire “Tale of” series. We’re starting to see a lot more experimentation coming out of Scotland, just something very cool. And I appreciate the fact that they’re adapting as much as they can within their current legal framework.

Mike – The nose is a liar, in terms of what lies ahead. The Tale of Tokyo is a little bit rough on the palate. Pepper and bitterness. I wonder if they tasted what was coming out of that Mizunara cask and said, “Oh crap, we need to do something about this because this is way over whatever” and they blended it with some of their other stuff and got what they figured was a relatively acceptable offering as opposed to a complete waste, then created a story around it.