Karuizawa "36 Views of Mt Fuji"

Karuizawa is considered Japanese royalty among whisky collectors. Known both for their highly collectible series and valuable individual bottles, Karuizawa recently held the title of "most expensive" Japanese whisky in the world when a single bottle of 52-year-old Karuizawa whisky sold for £363,000 ($483,645) in March 2020. One key differentiator between Karuizawa and many other collectible Japanese whiskies, like Yamazaki, is that the distillery is closed. The distillery officially closed in 2011, but new whisky hadn't been produced since 2001, meaning there is now a finite supply of Karuizawa in the world. Adding to the collectible nature of Karuizawa whiskies is that many of the distillery’s whiskies have been released as part of themed collections. The largest and most famous is the "36 Views of Mt. Fuji” series, featuring artwork by the 19th-century Japanese artist, Hokusai. There are 36 different labels that correspond with individual works created by Hokusai. The bottles in this collection were released in limited batches over multiple years, with access to allocations extremely difficult to come by. Additionally, each batch only contained certain labels from the series. Meaning, a collector would need access to all batch releases to complete the entire collection, which was virtually impossible. With that, this complete collection of all 36 bottles is one of only a few known to exist in the world, and is currently the only one available via the public market.