Moodie Davitt STUDIO: Harry Kartasis and Global Drinks Ltd unveil Japanese whisky Misaka

Prologue: Hong Kong-based Global Drinks Ltd last month announced the global launch of Misaka, a premium Japanese whisky range, which subsequently was officially unveiled at the TFWA Asia Pacific show in Singapore from 13 May.

Already, as reported, Misaka has been listed by Avolta at its Hong Kong Duty Free Store in West Kowloon Railway Station, Hong Kong with more agreements to be revealed soon.

Global Drinks Managing Director Harry Kartasis says the Misaka collection comprises seven “exceptional” whiskies that combine fine natural ingredients and time-honoured distillation techniques from Scotland and Japan.

The Misaka brand draws inspiration from the pristine natural spring water source located 250 metres beneath the mountain range of the same name in Japan’s Yamanashi prefecture – home to the famed Mount Fuji. This pure water, combined with the rare Mizunara oak casks, imbues the whiskies with what Kartasis describes as a unique and alluring flavour profile.

The Misaka range includes a 3-5 Year Old pure malt; a 12 Year Old pure malt finished in PX Sherry Oloroso casks; and a 12 Year Old pure malt finished in rare Hokkaido Mizunara (Japanese oak) casks. They are complemented by 15, 18, and 21 year blended and pure malt expressions also finished in prized Mizunara oak.

These premium and super-premium whiskies are aimed at discerning global travellers and high-end duty-paid accounts.

In this Moodie Davitt STUDIO video interview (available in short and long form), Kartasis talks to The Moodie Davitt Report Founder & Chairman Martin Moodie about his long-term desire to own his own brand; his love for Japanese whisky; and how a single SKU became a multiple age statement assortment. An edited introduction to the interview appears in written form below.

Martin Moodie: Harry this is a very special week for you as you have brought a new baby to the industry. Tell us all about it.

Harry Kartasis: During the pandemic, I had a lot of thinking time, a lot of downtime. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to have worked with amazing brands – the likes of Chivas Regal, Royal Salute and Bunnahabhain – but it’s always been a dream and a passion to own my own brand.

During that time of COVID, I thought, where can I take my business, what do I really want to do? I have a passion for whiskey. And so I started to think maybe I can create my own brand.

I went down the path of what whisky did I want? A Scotch whisky? An Irish whiskey? A Japanese whisky? And Japanese always started to come back to me for a couple of reasons. Why is that? I love Japan as a country. I’ve visited Japan many times and whilst I love Scotch whisky, Japanese whisky is just something that I’ve been very, very passionate about, including some of my favourite brands like Yamazaki, Hibiki and Hakushu. I just love those brands. And it was just time to do it. If I didn’t do it now, when would I do it?

I guess during COVID we all had different thoughts about where we wanted to take our businesses. And I was very fortunate that our business was doing okay during that time. So much so we actually opened up a restaurant [El Gordo Tacos & Grill Factory in Lockhart Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong] just at the end of the pandemic, as you know.

The difficult part about Misaka was how do I go about it? Where do I start? It’s a great thought but how do you bring all this together?

You don’t just create a new Japanese whiskey brand overnight. I imagine a hell of a lot of work must have gone into it.

It was a lot of work. I guess I was a little bit naive. I went to at least 10 or 12 different distilleries, basically via email and phone calls as I couldn’t travel to Japan at that time [due to the pandemic] and just tried to find out who’s who. It was very difficult to get a response back as there are not a lot of English-speaking people working in the distilleries.

I was very fortunate in that I was doing business with a company called Frontier in Japan on some Champagne. I said to my colleague there [Yuko Kobayashi] one day, “I have this dream. I have tried to connect with a number of distilleries but no luck. Can you please help me?”

Within about three weeks, she came back with three options. And by that time I was actually able to travel to Japan. So I took a number of trips to Japan and met with the distilleries, but there was one in particular called Minami Alps Distillery, which is just at the base of Mount Fuji actually.

And so after many meetings with them, we started to get somewhere…

[You can discover where that somewhere ultimately lay in the compelling video above] ✈