Consolidated "Buy Whiskey in Japan" thread (was: Haneda/Narita Duty Free Whiskey)
 

I was pretty happy with the duty free prices for Suntory Hibiki 17 at Haneda.

Does anyone know if duty free prices for Suntory Hibiki and Hakushu are the same between Haneda and Narita?

Also does anyone know if they have Hibiki 21 and Hakushu 18? I don't recall seeing it last time.

https://duty-free-japan.jp/narita/jp/index.html and search for サントリー

Hibiki and Hakushu are widely available at Haneda International Air Side, now if you want anything of Nikka it's gonna be tough.

Thanks so much.

Seems like as long as it is the Japan Duty Free, then its nice to know that the price should be the same between Haneda and Narita.

Monopolies are great, aren't they?

Japan has very low alcohol taxes (except beer where it is applied to malt beverage specifically) so you will find that buying the booze in the city is going to be lower at normal retail outlets.

This is true worldwide. The exceptions are places with very high taxes. And I think the global "Duty Free" business model is based on ignorance and having Norwegians in transit.

Not always true. If I buy a Nikka Yoichi 20 yrs at retail it would cost me 22.5K Yen (include sales tax), but only 16K or 18K yen (forgot) at airport duty free, which is not insigificant

A quick search shows that your Nikka 20 is available for 16.5 k retail. I couldn't find it on the Japan Duty Free site.

Another example Suntory Hibiki 17 is 8000 yen at the airport but 7500 yen (incl the 8% tax) retail.

But sometimes one is surprised by the range of retail. There is this hole in the wall liquor shop near Labi in Shibuya that sold Otard VSOP cognac for like 2600 yen. At a discount shop like Yamaya it probably costs in the high 3000s. Could easily exceed 4000 at Tokyu.

I just wish they had a larger selection of Japanese Whiskies. I have taken a liking to some of the Ichiro malts, so I always pick up a bottle retail and put in my checked luggage.

How much does the Yamazaki 18 cost at either duty free or just in Tokyo generally? I'll be there in March and debating whether to just wait until then to get it or grab a bottle for $175 USD in NYC later this month

Cheapest I see it online at the moment is 1,7500 yen, in store probably around 2,0000. If the yen slides further could be cheaper for you in terms of USD, but unlikely to be that far off your US price.

Yamazaki 25 is only ¥89,000 at the airport. That's less than the distributor price in the US (only liquor license holders need apply).

When I ran out and had offered a friend a taste I had to buy a bottle at retail for about $2000 US.

Hence it's very good value in the airport.

If you have a United branded credit card, you get 10% off at the ANA Duty Free store. I picked up a bottle of Yamakazi 18 for ~$140 that way a few months ago. They also had Nikka 21 Taketsuru.

I am at Narita right now, and all of the stores carrying Yamazaki whisky are completely sold out. I spoke with a salesperson and she said they are frequently sold out. I did see it in many stores in Tokyo, so if you really want this, you might not want to count on finding it at the airport.

Suntory whisky, especially Yamazaki has become bit popular in Japan these days. Thanks to daily morning drama (Asadora, 朝ドラ) by NHK (Japanese public broadcast station) called “Massan” (マッサン). Asadora is 15 minutes drama program broadcasted every morning from Monday to Saturday, NHK has been broadcasting this format of drama since 1961 and it is especially popular among elderly.

The current drama program “Massan” is based on a real life story of Masataka Taketsuru (竹鶴 政孝). Taketsuru was born in 1894 in Hiroshima, father was sake maker. Taketsuru was hooked in whisky making and in 1918 he went to Scotland’s University of Glasgow and studied chemistry for two years. While he was at Scotland he visited scotch whiskey makers and studied whiskey making.

During Taketsuru’s two years stay at Glasgow he met Scottish girl Jessie Cowan, got married at Glasgow, and returned to Japan in 1920 as married couple. This TV drama is about first whiskey making in Japan but same time the story about international marriage back 100 years ago in Japan. International marriage was something most Japanese have not seen back then, not many Japanese seen non-Japanese in their everyday life.

After return to Japan Taketsuru met Shinjiro Torii (鳥井 信治郎), businessman trying to break into non-Japanese alcoholic liquor business. 1906 Torii’s company produced first Japanese made red wine Akadama Port Wine. Taketsuru and Torii built first whisky distillery at Yamazaki near Kyoto, there is JR station Yamazaki between Kyoto and Osaka, this is where name for whiskey Yamazaki came from.

Because of this TV drama, Yamazaki whiskey has suddenly become popular in Japan. Another trivial, origin of the name of the company Suntory. People called president of the company Shinjiro Torii “Torii-san” (鳥井さん), and he just revered that and came up with “San-Torii” which lead to the company name Suntory, as the story has it…

Later on Masataka Taketsuru started his own whiskey distillery. Moved to Yoichi-cho, Hokkaido near Otaru where Taketsuru thought climate of Yoishi-cho is similar to whisky making climate in Scotland. The distillery in Yoichi-cho became Nikka Whiskey.

Masataka Taketsuru and Jessie Cowan remained married and Jessie Cowan passed away from illness from lung at Yoichi-cho at age of 64. Jessie Cowan experienced miscarriage and the couple could not have children. Masataka Taketsuru and Jessie Cowan adopted two children, a girl and a boy. Relationship between their daughter was estranged and the relationship did not re-established till near death of Jessie Cowan.

This TV dram talk a lot about whiskey making, but same time focus a lot on tear jerking story of life of Masataka Taketsuru and Jessie Cowan. Back then international marriage was rare in Japan.　:p　:)

Ahh okay good to hear - yeah it's selling out like crazy everywhere. The ABC store (state-run liquor store) near me in North Carolina stocks Yamazaki 12 but they've resorted to giving me their phone number and telling me to just call before I come in because it's selling out the second it hits the shelf if they even get it at all

My brother just returned from Tokyo (via HND) and indicated he had a heck of a time trying to find a bottle of Hibiki in most stores in Tokyo.

Hibiki starts from 12 years, where whisky has sit in a barrel for 12 years so number of bottles of 12 years Hibiki available was determined 12 years ago. Suntory whisky has become popular lately but there is no way to increase number of bottles available in market just because it has become popular.

Shortage of Hibiki at liquor stores will continue for next few years long as popularity of Hibiki continues. This is nothing liquor stores or Suntory can do about it…

That's disappointing. Thankfully I grabbed a bottle of Yamazaki 18 stateside (ezras.com has a phenomenal selection and ships to NC).

However I'm getting low on the Hibiki 17 I grabbed last year (on the what now seems ridiculously cheap 8000 yen) and really hopping to be able to grab 2 bottles when I'm in Japan in 5 weeks from either local department store / liquor store or the NRT / HND duty free (will be in both though NRT only to connect JL International to JL Domestic)

If we are arriving Narita, are we able to visit here or is this only for departures?

No, airport duty free shops are for departing passengers only in Japan.

Not quite at HND/NRT or duty-free, but when researching places to buy in Tokyo for my dad, I kept stumbling across recommendations for this place in Tokyo Station:

www.liquors-hasegawa.com

Easy enough to stop in if you're taking the N'EX to NRT.

this place is great!! now if i was posting TR's, i'd post a picture of some of the stuff and you can try it too...NOTE - they do not take credit cards!! don't get me started about why i don't post TR's.

cash only. but there is a 7-11 around the corner that takes foreign cards.

price was not as good for the Nikka 17 i bought versus the airport but not horrible.

they did have the 18 year old Kirin that i had not seen before that i grabbed...

http://www.scotchblog.ca/scotch_blog...ld-whisky.html

Good to know, I would've assumed with CC logos plastered on the site that it wouldn't be a problem.

Do you remember roughly how much the difference was? If it's marginal I'll probably just grab it so I don't risk finding that it's sold out at the airport.

Sorrry, I said Nikka but I meant hibiki 17. I recall it was 8800 at the airport and about 9500 at the Daimaru in Tokyo station. And 10000 at hasegawa.

Kirin 18
 

How much did you purchase the Kirin 18 for?

I think is was 19000 or 20000Y.

Btw, in NYC, picked up 3 bottles of the hibiki 12 for 67$us a bottle. 75cl bottles so decent. Price. Bought at Astor.

A little late but I wanted to thank you for this great synopsis. I'm watching Massan sporadically but I'm always amazed at the lead actress who speaks Japanese in the dorama by memorizing her lines phonetically.

I knew I should have picked up the Yamazaki 18 last time I was at NRT; they were sold out this time through. I did pick up some Hibiki 17 (8000 yen), and a Nikka Taketsuru 17 for a bargain at 3500 yen. I'd bought a couple of the other (younger) Taketsurus in the US for double that previously, and have seen them as much as quadruple that.

Flew ex-HND today just a quick update.

They were out of a ton of things (pretty much every single Yamazaki and Hakushu with the exception of NAS "The Yamazaki Single Malt."

They were also out of the Hibiki 17 (which is what I wanted) at 8000Yen however they had the limited edition Hibiki 17 (as far as I can tell the only difference was the custom bottle) for 11000Yen which I bought (with the exchange rate that comes to ~$90 which is still a steal vs. $150 before shipping and tax from various sources in the US).

They also had Hibiki 21 at 16500 Yen which I also grabbed since the premium over the limited edition 17 seemed small and worth it vs. getting 2 limited edition 17s.

great choices. i would have grabbed the 21 also. price for it was a steal IMO.

Agreed. I should also emphasize I went to every department store on Ginza as well as Yamaya in Shinjuku (near HR where I was staying) and none of them had the 17 in stock. They all had 12 and then most had the Yamazaki Single Malt NAS as well as the Nikka 12yo and 17 and 21 Taketsuru.

Ended up getting the new Nikka 12yo from Yamaya (about 800 Yen cheaper than department stores) to supplement the Hibiki's though I was hoping to find the Puncheon or Bourbon Barrel Yamazaki and didn't see those anywhere.

I flew through NRT last week and the Duty Free shops on the JAL side of the airport were sold out of Hibiki 21, 17 and 12. There were three bottles of Hibiki 17 in the fancy bottle. After I left, there were two. :D

One of the people at the shop told me that after March, there would be no more Hibiki sold at Duty Free. Take that with a grain of salt.

Duty Free Japanese Whisky at NRT
 

This might not be the place for this post, in which case moderators can move it, but want to give a heads up to whisky fans transiting NRT that Suntory has MASSIVELY repriced it's duty free whisky. The $35 bottle of 12 year Hibiki I used to buy is now $80. Same stuff inside with a "duty free limited edition" bottle.

Total hogwash and regret not buying a bottle of whisky when I was in Tokyo all week at the old $35 plus consumption tax. But at least I hope others won't make the same mistake.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B142 Safari/8536.25)

Blame the chinese for buying out all the stock since december

Supply & Demand at work I suppose. Why settle for $35 when you'll still sell more than you can make at $80?

You would never of guessed it was overpriced judging by the queues when I passed through last week. Never seen duty free so busy at 8am.

Decided to give it all a miss and head straight for the lounge.

when exactly was it 35?

sure, i remember buying bottles of lagavulin in the mid 90s at LHR for US$40 bucks also.

perhaps this will explain why.

http://www.japanese-whisky.com/about...panese-harmony

[BTW, as i posted above, you can buy it for US$64 at astor in the US.]

Update on Hibiki in Tokyo
 

Just spent the last few days searching for hibiki 17 in Tokyo in anticipation the airport duty free would not have any. For the record, I visited the Yamazaki distillery in kyoto this trip and even they didn't have any hibiki 17 available to sell in the gift shop, because of such high demand.
After many disappointing runs at the liquor stores, super markets and department stores in the last few days, here are the only successes we found.

Takashimaya: good abundance of Japanese whiskey on the shelf including many different nikka varieties. Hibiki 17 sells for ¥12,960 a bottle.

Liquors Hasagawa: went to several of their locations in Tokyo station to come up empty, however randomly came across the real liquor store in the station located across from Anclar Tapas near the street exit. Here they had everything including Hibiki 17 for ¥12,600.

Shocking how scarce it's become but still a great deal to buy in Tokyo and bring home. I saw Hibiki 17 going for $270 in NYC last month, so ~$100 is an exceptional deal for the smoothness found in Hibiki 17. Good luck fellow travelers.