Glengoyne Mizunara Oak Is Worth Hunting Down

Welcome to Taste Test, where every week our critic Jonah Flicker explores the most buzzworthy and interesting whiskeys in the world. Check back each Sunday for his latest whiskey review.

2026 is proving to be one of those years that is front-loaded with a whole lot of whiskey releases that might make it into the top ten, or even top five, of the year. The latest to join that rarified group is a single malt scotch from Glengoyne, an often overlooked distillery that also released one of my favorite whiskies of 2025. This new release is very different, however—it’s a sherry bomb of a single malt that spent an impressive six years aging in Japanese mizunara oak, and the result is a high-proof whisky that is absolutely worth hunting down.

Glengoyne is located just outside of Glasgow, and while it is considered to be a Highland distillery, it’s actually located on the dividing line between the Highland and Lowland regions. The distillery has been owned by the family-run Ian Macleod Distillers for more than 20 years (the company purchased it from Edrington back in 2003), and the focus has been and still is on producing sherry cask-matured whisky. A couple of notable exceptions arrived last year with the introduction of Glengoyne White Oak and White Oak 24, the latter of which was matured entirely in bourbon barrels and virgin oak. This was one of the best scotches of 2025, in my opinion, and while the new Glengoyne Mizunara Oak is an entirely different whisky, it is just as good or maybe even better.

This is the third edition in Glengoyne’s Oak Masters’ Series following the White Oak releases, and according to the distillery there will be more to come. It’s a 16-year-old single malt that was aged for 10 years in first-fill and refill sherry casks, and then another six years in Japanese mizunara oak. And not just any mizunara, but virgin mizunara—something that the distillery claims to be a first in scotch whisky.

They might be right, at least in terms of how long this secondary maturation lasted, as other distilleries like GlenAllachie have used virgin mizunara before for shorter periods of time. There have been some notable American and Irish whiskey releases that have been aged in mizunara before, not to mention a range of Japanese whiskies, but scotch aged in this type of oak remains relatively scarce. That’s because mizunara barrels are expensive and can be leaky and hard to work with, although the particular flavors they impart are thought to be worth it.

In the case of this Glengoyne whisky, these flavors are particularly complex. Ten years in sherry casks is a pretty standard amount of time, and certainly enough to imbue a whisky with the dark colors and matching flavors that this has picked up—think big dried fruit, spice, and caramel notes. But that extended secondary maturation, really so much longer than a finish, has imprinted classic mizunara notes of incense, baked apple, cinnamon, and toasted nuts into the whisky’s DNA as well. The result is a melange of sometimes disparate flavors picked up from two very different types of casks that exists in harmony instead of fighting for dominance. And yeah, it’s up there with the best I’ve tried to date as we near the half year mark.

There’s a catch, however: Just 150 bottles are coming to the U.S., each priced at $400. Glengoyne Mizunara Oak was already released in the U.K. and sold out rapidly. But don’t let that dissuade you, because if you are a serious scotch whisky collector, or perhaps just someone looking to branch out from better known sherry cask whiskies like the Macallan, this bottle is worth tracking down.

Score: 96

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