Glengoyne 16 Year Old Mizunara Oak

The third release in Glengoyne's Oak Masters' Series, this 16 Year Old takes the distillery's classic sherried style somewhere it has never gone before: Hokkaidō, Japan, and the notoriously difficult wood known as Mizunara.

Glengoyne, sited on the Highland line just north of Glasgow, has long built its reputation on slow distillation and patient sherry-cask maturation. For the first ten years, this whisky follows that familiar path, resting in the distillery's classic first-fill sherry and refill casks. What follows is anything but familiar: a further six years in virgin Mizunara oak casks — considerably longer than the short finishing periods usually applied to this wood. Mizunara is prized and feared in equal measure among distillers; it's porous, prone to leakage, and takes decades of seasoning before a cooper can even use it, which is part of why full Mizunara finishes of this length are so rarely seen.

Bottled in 2025 at a natural cask strength of 53.4% ABV, non-chill filtered and of natural colour, the whisky carries Glengoyne's sherried backbone alongside the incense, sandalwood and spice character that only extended Mizunara maturation can bring. Just 3,195 bottles were released worldwide, following on from the two White Oak expressions that opened the Oak Masters' Series.

This is a limited, single-batch release rather than a standing expression, and one built for collectors and drinkers who want to see how far Scotch can travel while remaining recognisably itself.