You know the saying it is better to be lucky than good? Well, that has never really applied to me. Not because I am actually good at anything but because I have never been all that lucky when it comes to winning things. Then August 19, 2020, happened. Buckle your seatbelts and please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times. We are about to journey down a rollercoaster of emotions.
At the risk of this becoming just an Angel's Envy blog, we have another bottle to talk about. Don't worry your pretty little heads because this will not be the last one either! When Angel's Envy announced that they were releasing an extremely limited edition, 10-year anniversary bourbon I knew we had to try and get it. This would not be a guarantee because they were only producing 1,200 bottles and they had to be picked up at the distillery in KY. I would not be deterred, however! As much as Lindsay and I love Angel's Envy's product we knew it would be amazing and had to try our luck. We set a reminder on our phones and waited for 10 A.M on that fateful day.
I knew my work schedule for the day and I had a meeting at 10:30 which should be plenty of time to preorder the bottle before. Lindsay had to go to work at around the same time so she would be able to try her luck to secure us a bottle as well. As the time approached I prepared. 9:50... it was go time. I logged into the website... and it was down. For the next ten minutes, I franticly refreshed on my phone and my computer with no luck. Lindsay wasn't doing any better. 10 hit and I still couldn't get in. No one could. There was so much excitement for this release it had crashed Angel's Envy's servers. Sadly Lindsay had to leave so she was out of the running. My meeting was coming up but it was a virtual one so I could keep refreshing on my phone and my other screen. I didn't have to present during the meeting so I was fine paying slightly less attention to it. For over an hour I was refreshing constantly waiting for the breakthrough so I could preorder one of these special bottles.
My attention span started to wane. I took a break from focusing on the site as much. Angel's Envy said they would send an email and let us know when it was ready. By sheer determination and dumb luck, I happened to hit refresh JUST as soon as the site came back up. Excited, frantic, and surprised I filled out the form as fast as I could and paid to safely secure a bottle because I didn't know if the site would crash again. Then I got the confirmation email. I had actually successfully bought this unique whiskey. I went to Angel's Envy's Facebook page to see how other patrons were doing. They sadly did not fare as well. Most of the page was outrage at the fact the bottle had already sold out. I couldn't believe it. Looking at the times of the post and the time stamp on my email meant the bottles sold out in 4 mins. 4 mins! If I would have refreshed the page even a moment later I would have missed out. Better to be lucky than good.
Angel's Envy sent out an apology the next day for all the confusion in the preorder and let us all know that they would only have lottery drawings moving forward. Going back to how I started this post I have never really won anything in a lottery so hopefully, this will not be Lindsay and my last special edition bottle from them.
Now comes the really fun part! Lindsay and I had to go to the distillery to pick it up. We love road trips and we love Louisville so we were stoked for this adventure. The one big downside was almost everything was closed due to the pandemic. (If you are reading this in the future, 2020 was a really weird year). So to save some money we decided to drive to Louisville after work, grab some dinner, spend one night, wake up and go to the distillery and drive back home. It sounded like a plan on paper but we still wanted to do something unique down there so we found one of the coolest places ever. It is called the Mega Caverns and it is a massive underground cavern. So massive that we went Zip Lining...UNDERGROUND! It was awesome. I am in no way sponsored by them but I am adding the link. Do yourself a favor when you are in Louisville for the bourbon and stop by this place.
Now it is time for the real reason you are here though. How was the Japanese Mizunara Oak? First off it comes in a gorgeous crystal decanter that really makes me want a bourbon tattoo, and secondly, it was disappointingly excellent. I can see your confused looks behind the screen but fear not dear reader for I will explain. There are only 1,200 bottles of this and they are not making it again. They had to spend 5 years working with the Japanese to allow them to export 200-year-old Mizunara Oaks out of Japan to make the casks. They are not producing anymore. My bottle was near impossible to get and I can't even imagine the price of them on the secondary market. This one bottle is all Lindsay and I will ever have of this whiskey. We were both kind of hoping it would be mediocre. We knew it wouldn't be bad but we didn't want to love it. Well, Angel's Envy punked us because we both loved it. The disappointing part is that we will never be able to drink it again because this was an excellent whiskey.
It was the perfect amount of burn to remind you that you were drinking a cask whiskey but still so smooth that you could easily sip it. It had just enough sweetness to make you want another drink but still had a great blend of spices to balance it.
Angel's Envy Mizunara Cask is 97.8 proof and is one of the smoothest cask strength whiskeys I have ever had. These are the listed notes but I don't always get all of these. I am curious to hear what you got.
Appearance: Golden amber and nearly darker gold
Nose: Smokey wood, sandalwood, banana bread, and cherry with a strong note of ripe apples
Palate: Vanilla, oak, rich chocolate, banana, and light black pepper. Light floral and fruity with notes of cinnamon and apples as you sip it, with hints of coffee as well
Finish: Slightly dry, toasty oak, and a pleasantly lingering smokiness that calls for another sip
I would recommend a glass of this neat but as always drink it the way you will enjoy it most. Overall, I would absolutely recommend trying Angel's Envy Mizunara Cask if you are ever able to find it. If not just use the picture as your phone's background because that is the prettiest bottle I have ever seen.
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