It took Angel’s Envy‘s Kyle Henderson half a decade of asking around, working the phones, and crossing his fingers to finally get his hands on just a handful of Japanese Mizunara oak casks. “It took a good five years from the concept to actually getting ahold of the barrels and getting them to the U.S.,” he says, ticking off the issues that make this coveted wood so difficult to obtain. “It’s so controlled, the growth of the trees is so slow, it does not like to grow straight, it’s porous as heck so there’s a lot of issues with constructing [the barrels]…”
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Read article>Working with Mizunara oak (when you can get it) presents a number of challenges, in other words. So when Henderson, production manager for Angel’s Envy distillery, managed to land a few brand new Mizunara oak barrels from a cooperage in Japan, he and his colleagues—two of whom happen to be his father, Angel’s Envy Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer Wes Henderson, and his brother, Lead Distillery Operator Andrew Henderson—knew they had to create something special with it.
The resulting whiskey, properly titled Angel’s Envy Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Finished in Japanese Mizunara Oak Casks, is a blend of four-year-old and nine-year-old bourbons finished for two years in Japanese oak before bottling. On its face, that may sound unremarkable, as cask finished whiskies—those that spend a little time in barrels that formerly held other liquids—are very much en vogue these days. But Mizunara oak barrels are no conventional casks, and Angel’s Envy is not in the habit of turning out conventional whiskey
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