I have tasted the Harmony on several occasions and it is excellent, better than any blended Scotch I’ve tried at the same price point, and the best of the options in this story for savoring with nothing but some ice. Unlike its 17 and 21 year brethren it bears no age statement, but is made from the same exceptional spirts from Suntory’s Yamazaki, Hakushu and Chita distilleries, including at least 10 malt and grain whiskies, aged in five different types of casks, including the famed Japanese Mizunara oak. But it’s also by far the most affordable, and while 21 often retails for over a thousand dollars a bottle, the Harmony is widely available in the mid $80s and sometimes the $70s. Hibiki Harmony: Brought to market in 2016, this is the most affordable label in the prestigious Hibiki lineup, which includes the most awarded Japanese whiskey of all time, the 21-year old. It does make a great cocktail but still has enough body to drink on the rocks, and it is one of the least expensive and most widely available Japanese whiskies available in this country at around $35 ( has it for $28 with free shipping). Designed to be the perfect highball spirit, Toki is a lighter, blended whisky that uses the acclaimed Yamazaki malt as its key base component, alongside Hakushu malt whisky, aged in American white oak cask, plus Chita grain whisky, adding sweet vanilla and a clean taste. To cap all this off, Suntory created an entirely new blended whisky specifically for the task, Toki, in 2016. Suntory found that fizzier finer bubbles were ideal, so they super-charged the carbonation, to at least one and a half times that of soda water from a bottle or bar soda gun, with smaller bubbles. Suntory Toki: In every izakaya (pub) or yakitori joint in Japan, people are drinking Highballs from ice filled mugs, and in the Eighties, Suntory developed a sophisticated draught Highball machine that lets bars offer fast, simple, consistent serving of the cocktails, which need to be cold, so the refrigerated machines pre-cool the whisky and soda before going on ice, which results in less water dilution. ![]() Suntory's Toki was developed especially for making Highball cocktails, but you can also enjoy it. Not only are there other options, most are cheaper, more available and either new or new to this country. But most people still associate Japanese whisky with single malts, and far less know of any other blends besides older Hibiki labels, which are hard to find and when you do very expensive (specialty Japanese whisky e-tailer has one of the best selections and charges competitive prices - $950 for the 21, $730 for the 17 and $650 for the 12). ![]() Serious whisky lovers did not overlook Hibiki, and in fact, the 21-year old - virtually impossible to find – has won more major awards than any other whisky product from the country, including World’s Best Blended Whisky - five times in the past ten years. But when it comes to blends, I think the older Hibiki outdoes everyone, including the elite flagship Scotch blends, Johnnie Walker Blue, Chivas Royal Salute, Dewar’s Signature and so on. So while I think the Yamazaki and Hakushu and other first rate Japanese single malts are excellent, I’d still personally take my favorite Scotch, The Macallan. While it is never named in the film, Hibiki 17 is what Bill Murray drinks repeatedly when sitting at the bar in the Park Hyatt Tokyo several times in the hit movie Lost in Translation, which helped expose Japanese whisky culture to the Western world. ![]() ![]() I’ve been to Japan (and Scotland and Ireland and Kentucky) several times, visited its distilleries and famed whisky bars, have written extensively on Japanese whiskies, and was always most wowed by the Hibiki, Suntory’s highest end blended product. Yet while connoisseurs cleaned out shelves of Yamazaki wherever they could find them, and Japan certainly does produce exceptional single malts, I have always thought it was even better at blended whiskies.
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