The Guardian does not surprise me:

The Highlands of Scotland, though, lie thousands of miles to the west: the home of the best single malt whisky in the world is Yoichi, until last year a little known town on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido. Its rise to the pinnacle of the centuries-old tradition of turning barley into "the water of life" was enough to make any proud Scotsman weep into his tumbler of Glenfiddich.

Not only did Nikka's Yoichi 1987 vintage beat dozens of other labels to claim the single malt title at last year's world whisky awards - in Glasgow of all places - its rival distiller, Suntory, won the best blended whisky award with its 30-year-old Hibiki.

I enjoyed quite a bit of Japanese single-malt when we were there a few years ago. It was easily equal to any of the Scotches I've had - and I was careful to have plenty of each, for comparison purposes, knowing I'd write this post, three years later.

I remember spending a lot of time searching Japanese stores for a bottle of a specific Yamazaki that I had at one hotel bar. Since we couldn't speak Japanese, we couldn't ask shopkeepers for it. So I was trying to find it based on how I remembered the label - oh, it's got some big characters here, and it's off-white and there's some smaller text down the left side, etc.. Of course I never found it. We did bring back a couple of bottles of other Suntorys that I grabbed at the duty-free shop on our way home, but they disappeared (into my liver) quickly. I've never seen any of it in the States - at least not in NC. (oh look, this might be it, right here on the NC ABC special order list... seems unlikely, but i'll try it!)