Updated 01 Mar 2016
In Japan, people who are not fans of beers or sours, but still enjoy a few drinks with their buddies, tend to go for highballs when at the Izakaya with their friends. A highball is a whisky cocktail. It is whisky mixed with carbonated water. However, there are many variations. For example, you can mix ginger ale with whiskey which is ginger-high, Oolong tea mixed with whisky to get oolong-high, brown sugar carbonated water mixed with whisky to get Koku-high, or black-high.
One of the most notable choice of whisky for mixing highballs is the Suntory Kakubin blended whisky. A Kakubin Highball is referred to as Kaku-High. Since I have a “Black 43°” version of the Suntory Kakubin, I thought I’d drink it straight and write a review on it.
Then I thought, such a review just wouldn’t be interesting enough. Why not pit the Suntory black kakubin against the world-dominating blended whisky, the Johnnie Walker Black Label?
The Johnnie Walker Black Label is an iconic blend which helped the brand to become the Darth Sidious of the whisky universe. It is one of the best-selling scotch in the world today. Many whisky-lovers believe that the Johnnie Walker Black Label is too premium to be a mixer base, and that it should be enjoyed neat. However, since the Suntory Kakubin Black 43° is two up from the standard Kakubin and one up from the White Kakubin bottles, maybe similar to how Black Label is one up from the Johnnie Walker Red Label, I thought it would still be fair to line the two black-labeled blended whiskies up against each other.
This is Suntory vs Johnnie Walker, East vs. West, the Emperor of Japan vs the Emperor of THE Empire. I’ll have them neat, not mixed, and see how they fair against each other.
Colour:
Both of yellow whisky colour with the Johnnie Walker Black Label just a tad bit darker.
Nose:
Kakubin Black 43° - Alcohol, not much else. Very very very faint fruitiness in the back, raisin.
Johnnie Walker Black Label- Horrible scent. It is the THE whisky smell I hated before I became a whisky connoisseur. It is the smell of the poison I put in ginger ale to consume with my highschool friends in order to fit in. When I smell this I can almost get what I got from the Johnnie Walker Gold Reserve but then before I get there I get stopped by this coarse wall built by bricks of grossness; bringing back very unpleasant decade old high school memories. Some of these memories consist of me puking through my mouth as I struggle to get home after parties at my friends’. What is that grotesque element that I despise? Is it licorice?
Palate:
Kakubin Black 43° - Gentle, vanilla, and very fruity. It is a sweet piece. Definitely packs more taste to it than its scent. There is definitely malts that had been finished in sherry or port casks. It can in my opinion, actually pass as a bearable low price-range single malt. It can do fine by itself, just fine.
Johnnie Walker Black Label- Taste is much better than it smells. However, as the dried fruits are just getting out of their doors to say hello to me they get quickly slapped by the grossness that gives me the about-to-barf sensation near my diaphragm. There is some nice whisky smokiness in the finish but then again the bad taste is just way too distracting for me. I think again that the demon of distraction is the bastard child of licorices and maybe chenpi- dried tangerine peel- gosh I hate both these blasphemous things. Johnnie walker says this is a blend that consists of various elements of fruits, sweet smoke and gentle peatiness… well I say why don’t you just get a proper single malt to enjoy each of those flavours whole-heartedly? Such monster blend consisting of 40 different malts is just a very distracting bottle and I don’t get why it is so revered. Maybe contrary to what some scotch lover say, it really is meant for cocktails and the mixing with sodas, but I really don’t understand how people can enjoy whisky by mixing it with sodas… anyway, that is a different world I do not live in.
Verdict: Do I need to say more? I enjoy whiskies, not whisky cocktails or whisky mixes… so why am I even writing this piece? My verdict is, you can enjoy the Suntory Kakubin neat, but not the Johnnie Walker Black Label. At least that is what my body tells me, very strongly.
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