The new brand of whisky by Suntory is called Suntory World Whisky Ao. As you may have guessed from the name it’s a blend of whiskies from the world’s five big whisky regions: Scotland, Ireland, USA, Canada, and Japan. They have not told us exactly which distilleries the whiskies are sourced from, and this is Beam Suntory we’re talking about here. Could be any of a number of them!
In any case, we may have to wait a few more months to find out, as Ao is due out in Japan on April 16, 2019. It will be priced at 5000 yen before tax, 700ml, 43% abv.
Suntory themselves say that this is their first time ever attempting a world whisky blend, so it should be interesting to see what they’ve come up with.
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I can’t help but feel it would be more exciting if it was an Asian whisky, including Japanese, Taiwanese, and Indian; but of course, Suntory Beam doesn’t own distilleries in the latter two. I can’t say I’ve had any of Beam Suntory’s Irish and Canadian whisk(e)y. Can’t be any worse than Crown Royal.
I agree it would be more interesting but yes, unlikely to come from Suntory. Perhaps an independent bottler could make it happen though!