For the past few decades, it has been thought that the best whisky comes from Scotland, or Ireland, or any other country. The turning point came in 2008, when the World Whiskies Awards, the world's most prestigious whisky competition, awarded the best single malt whisky of the year to Japan's Nikka Yoichi 20 years, and SUNTORY Hibiki 30 years to be named the best blended whisky of the year. This is the first time that Scotland has dropped the award for single malt whisky of the year, and the first time Japan has won two whisky awards. In 2015, renowned wine critic Jim Murray selected the 2013 Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask Whisky as the best whisky of the year in his Whisky Bible, much to the surprise of Scottish distillers and their followers.
 
The whisky market in Japan is almost monopolized by two giants, SUNTORY and NIKKA. Unlike Scotch whisky, which is rich and free, SUNTORY and NIKKA do not exchange raw spirits, but rely on their own distilleries to produce different raw spirits by changing the distillation elements, and then blend them. As a result, both companies have multiple distilleries that produce malt, grain, and blended whisky, and account for about 90% of the domestic whisky market.
 
Yamazaki Distillery was built in 1924 as Suntory's first distillery, located at the confluence of the three rivers of the Katsura River, the Uji River, and the Kizu River. The cask is Yamazaki's specialty, and the whisky made from Mizunara wooden barrels, which is unique to Japan, has the smell of sandalwood and coconut, and some people say that this unique flavor is Oriental Zen.
 
Yamazaki's first single malt whisky, Yamazaki 12, was released in 1984 and matured in American bourbon, Spanish and Japanese minara barrels. Yamazaki 12-year-old now needs about 2,000 yuan to buy in China, which is much higher than the 12-year-old single malt whisky of other distilleries.
 
Yamazaki 1923 is a non-vintage whisky launched by Yamazaki in 2014, which is blended from more than 60 original spirits to replace the low-vintage Yamazaki 10-year-old. The current market price of Yamazaki 1923 is about 800 yuan, which is a bit too high for an unvintage whisky, but in vertical comparison, Yamazaki 1923 is still the most suitable whisky for beginners.
 
In 1999, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of SUNTORY, Yamazaki released the 25-year-old single malt whisky, which blends several original spirits aged in sherry casks of Yamazaki Distillery for more than 25 years, and produces only a few thousand bottles per year. In 2012, WWA awarded the World's Best Single Malt Whisky Award to Yamazaki 25 Years. Nowadays, if you want to buy a bottle of Yamazaki 25, I am afraid that it will be difficult to do so without 50,000 banknotes in your hand.
 
The most criticized point of Japanese whisky represented by Yamazaki is that the price is ridiculously expensive, because the Japanese whisky distillery is small in scale and low in production, and the news of the suspension of sales and distillery production is frequent, which makes the price of whisky soar at an almost absurd rate, and many ordinary players are even more unaffordable.