Spirit Of The Week: Glenmorangie x Azuma Makoto 23 Y.O. Single Malt Whisky
“The Willy Wonka of Whisky” collaborates with a Japanese flower artist for a forest-inspired, Chardonnay cask-finished Scotch.
“I’ve always loved trees and the flora and fauna of forests,” Glenmorangie’s Dr. Bill Lumsden told us last year when we covered his aptly named A Tale of the Forest expression. “I live in the country and there’s a wood next to us—I spend quite a lot of time wandering there. A forest has an incredible ability to heighten my senses: my sense of smell, sight and my sense of hearing too…I love the crunch of leaves under your feet. I feel there’s such purity to the air in a forest that I get much more crystal-clear aromas there than anywhere else.”
It’s obvious this wildly imaginative whisky creator likes to balance his time blending beakers in Glenmorangie’s Highland distillery like a mad professor with more professorial, leisurely walks through the glens and woods near his home.
For A Tale of the Forest he and his team added woodsy botanicals like rowan berries, birch bark, juniper berries and even heather flowers to the peat they used to kiln the barley.
Now for 2024 Dr. Lumsden continues the arboreal quest, but twists it with a considerably more rare single malt distilled in 1998—just three years after he joined Glenmorangie. What made this specific juice even rarer is the fact that this whisky was poured into Chardonnay casks only eight years later, the very first Glenmorangie to ever mature in such wood.
Not surprising he would dare to play with such a coveted single malt—many have dubbed Dr. Lumsden the “Willy Wonka of Whisky,” a moniker that both hints at his unorthodoxy and strangely underplays it.
This newest expression was imagined when the esteemed Japanese flower artist Azuma Makoto visited the good doctor at their distillery in Tain, and the two bonded over their love of the forest. The master of ikebana—the ancient Japanese art of flower arrangement—and wild whisky experimenter decided to craft a whisky that reflected this fascination.
Hence Glenmorangie x Azuma Makoto 23 Year Old was born. We had a chance to ask Glenmorangie’s Director of Whisky Creation how exactly something like this expression is born, and he was kind enough to lift the curtain a bit.
The description of Glenmorangie x Azuma Makoto 23 Year Old is a bit vague. Is it double barreled just for a bit in Chardonnay casks or aged for its entire 23 years in them?
The Glenmorangie x Azuma Makoto 23 Year Old is a careful blend of Glenmorangie that has been aged entirely in bourbon casks, with whisky finished in casks that once held Chardonnay white wine from the Meursault appellation in Burgundy, one of my favorite wine regions. Once all of the whisky was 23 Years Old, it was married together to reveal complex layers of flora and fauna notes.
I selected this particular cask recipe to capture the essence of shinra bansho—a notion I explored with Azuma-san during his time in Scotland some years ago. This concept celebrates all of nature, from the ground to the sky.
Inspired by this, we created a whisky that captured a contrast of light, floral flavors with deeper earthy notes—evocative of Scotland and the natural world that surrounds our Highland distillery.
With an expression as esoteric as this do you first decide on a concept, for example working with Azuma Makoto, and then find a barrel to match? Or do you first taste the potential of specific barrels and then construct a concept or artist that captures or reflects this profile?
The idea for the new Glenmorangie x Azuma Makoto 23 Year Old began with a brainstorm during Azuma Makoto’s first trip to visit me at the distillery some years ago. Inspired by the unique natural beauty of the Scottish Highlands that surrounds our distillery in Tain, Azuma-san and I had the idea to collaborate on a unique creation that reflected our shared love of nature.
Me envisioning a delicious single malt that would evoke Scotland’s elemental world—flora, fauna, earth, moss, water—and Azuma-san conjuring up a stunning botanical sculpture that encapsulated those exquisite flavors.
Walk me through the process of how you design the flavor profile of such a highly abstract expression. How do you manifest this concept into a single malt?
We take an imaginative approach to whisky-making at Glenmorangie, and myself and the whisky creation team are constantly dreaming up new ideas and how we could capture those in whisky form.
So, with a highly conceptual and artistic expression of this kind, I like to start the process by considering the flavors and aromas I hope to evoke in the final liquid—in this case, inspired by the various sensory experiences of being in nature around the Glenmorangie distillery.
Knowing I wanted this special collaboration with Azuma Makoto to be a celebration of the beauty of the natural world around us, I selected a cask recipe that would fuse heady, floral notes that are typical of Glenmorangie’s classic style with earthier, richer flavors of a whisky that had been finished in white burgundy casks. The goal was to achieve a truly elemental and mellow style of Glenmorangie.
Combined with Azuma-san’s stunning sculpture, which has been brought to life on the whisky’s presentation box, it turned out even more beautiful than I had ever imagined—truly a gift from nature itself.
Only about 1,000 bottles of the Glenmorangie x Azuma Makoto 23-Year Old will be released in the US, on sale through the holiday season. Bottled at 46 percent ABV and packaged in a beautiful wood box showcasing Azuma Makoto’s ikebana flower art, Glenmorangie x Azuma Makoto 23-Year Old can be had for $1,405.
Follow Deputy Editor Nicolas Stecher on Instagram at @nickstecher and @boozeoftheday.
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