1979 Vintage Awamori… Is Five Hundred Years Old

1979 is the name of a song (a melancholic one, of course) by The Smashing Pumpkins, but it’s also the year of birth of awamori, a beverage distilled from indica rice, which you might have already come across.

A variant of the more classic shochu (a Japanese alcoholic drink generally made from rice or barley), awamori has been produced on the tropical archipelago of Okinawa since the fifteenth century. The first time you take a sip of this beverage, it’s quite possible that your lips will twist into an expression like that produced by drinking a very strong liquor. But it’s an expression which you only realise, at that very moment, that you’d never quite been able to put into words before. And oh, what you’d been missing!

And so, you’re now prepared for this 1979 vintage. Connoisseurs say it has a clear, refreshing taste which easily sets it apart from its competitors… All of whom are younger, unsurprisingly. Distilled in 1979 and bottled in 2000 by the famous Seishin distillery, this awamori is sold at the staggering price of 239,484 Japanese Yen (roughly 2,200 Euros). It would seem, then, that age is sometimes an indication of value.