Master Blender Dr. Emma Walker talks us through working with renowned Chef Kei Kobayashi to create Johnnie Walker&rsquo;s latest limited edition whisky.

How does one begin to describe the taste of umami? In the world of food, it&rsquo;s usually described as savoriness, or the &ldquo;essence of deliciousness.&rdquo; But in the world of liquor, umami is largely unexplored &ndash; there are sweet, bitter, sour, and even smoky drinks, but liquors with that je ne sais quoi of umami remain elusive.&nbsp;
Johnnie Walker is about to change that. In the brand&rsquo;s quest to constantly explore and expand the boundaries of flavor, they&rsquo;ve brought the mysterious qualities of umami to their flagship Scotch whisky with a limited edition blend: Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami.&nbsp;

To create this special liquid, Johnnie Walker collaborated with Kei Kobayashi, the celebrated chef and owner of the three-Michelin-starred restaurant Kei in Paris. Johnnie Walker, led by Master Blender Dr. Emma Walker, worked with Chef Kei to develop a flavor journey that not only encapsulates the unique profile of umami, but evokes powerful sensory memories.&nbsp;
The flavor journey of the Elusive Umami begins with its aroma, or &ldquo;nose&rdquo; as it&rsquo;s called &ndash; it features a pure, slightly woody and earthy scent. It&rsquo;s this smell that brings back Chef Kei to where he grew up, in the mountains of Nagano, Japan. As a young boy, Chef Kei remembers waking up at 5 a.m. every morning and walking amongst the stunning scenery, breathing in the pure air and the scent of trees.&nbsp;
This sets the stage for the Elusive Umami&rsquo;s taste, a beautifully balanced Scotch whisky of sweet and savory flavors. Once it touches your palette, notes of blood oranges and red berries arise, followed by a touch of smoked meat, then warming with hints of salt and pepper. It then concludes with a long, sweet fruit finish. It&rsquo;s a symphony of flavors that pairs well with a sumptuous bite: Elusive Umami&rsquo;s perfect serve is neat with a spoon of Oscietra caviar, which unlocks its full depth of flavor.&nbsp;

All of this is brought to life through a blend of hand-picked whiskies from Johnnie Walker&rsquo;s 10-million cask reserve. Only one in 25,000 casks succeeds in achieving this Elusive Umami&rsquo;s character &ndash; compared to the classic Johnnie Walker Blue Label&rsquo;s one in 10,000 &ndash; making this new limited edition one of Johnnie Walker&rsquo;s rarest blends. Each whisky is treated like an ingredient for a recipe, allowing Chef Kei and Emma to bring out the unique character of this innovative Scotch whisky.&nbsp;
The Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami was launched here in the Philippines last Oct. 9, at the recently reopened Makati Shangri-La hotel. Emma herself was present to introduce guests to the distinctive new whisky. Much like her collaboration with Chef Kei, Emma and Johnnie Walker also worked with esteemed local chefs for the launch, creating a culinary sensory adventure with Angelo Comsti of the Asian Culinary Exchange, Chef Edwin Loh of Makati Shangri-La, Don Baldosano of Linamnam MNL, and Nicco Santos and Quenee Vilar of Cafe Aurora.

To dive even deeper into the rich expression of Elusive Umami, L&rsquo;Officiel Philippines sat down with Emma during the launch and talked about how the collaboration came to be, what she learned from Chef Kei, and what she hopes Elusive Umami will unlock for its drinkers.

L&rsquo;OFFICIEL PHILIPPINES: Tell us about the collaboration for Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami. How did the idea for it originate, and how did the partnership with Chef Kei come about?

EMMA WALKER: Whenever we&rsquo;re creating a new whisky for Johnnie Walker, we&rsquo;re already working in collaboration. We&rsquo;re working in collaboration with the Johnnie Walker Global Brand team, with our innovation partners. We start the conversation with those guys &ndash; they talk to me and our team, and ask if we can think about Johnnie Walker Blue Label and umami. It was those guys that came up with the idea of partnering with Chef Kobayashi. And the opportunity &ndash; you can&rsquo;t say no to that, can you? The man is just a genius. So it was fantastic to be able to work with him, and get to understand umami through his eyes, through his knowledge, and through his craftsmanship.

The classic Johnnie Walker Blue Label is already a rare liquid that only appears only once every 10,000 casks. How did you manage to make Elusive Umami even more unique?

We have more than 10 million casks of mature Scotch whisky that our teams get to work with, so it&rsquo;s an amazing palette of flavor. But when I&rsquo;m looking at that, only one in 10,000 has the right depth, character, quality, aroma, and texture to make Johnnie Walker Blue Label. Now, when we were working with Chef Kobayashi on this epicurean journey, we were looking to create a whisky that talked to umami and had that moment of deliciousness and evoked emotion. Yeah, only one in 25,000 of that Johnnie Walker cask reserves had the right temperament that when you blended those together, it created this amazing whisky.

And what was that process like, creating this special liquid?

Back in the lab in Scotland, we sort of almost unpacked Johnnie Walker Blue Label. We were thinking about what could be the key to umami. So even before we talked to Chef Kobayashi, we were thinking It&rsquo;s going to have to be balanced. We&rsquo;re going to have sweetness, we&rsquo;re going to have fruitiness there, because they almost epitomize Scotch whisky. So when you think about Scotch whisky, you have those flavors from the maturation and production process.

So what we did was when we were going to Paris to work with Chef Kobayashi, we took our flavor building blocks. Then we thought, if we&rsquo;re thinking about umami, we&rsquo;re thinking about some of our rich, meaty, most savory whiskies, like Mortlach or Benrinnes, that have that depth but still have that thread back to Johnnie Walker Blue Label. We took our smoke, so we also thought about Caol Ila. We also thought, maybe we want some smoke with a little bit more nuance, so we took along some Talisker with us, where you can almost taste the sea spray and the white pepper.

These were whiskies from different distilleries, different maturation styles; some that&rsquo;d be the next bourbon, some that&rsquo;d have more gentle maturation. We took all these things and went to Paris and talked to Chef Kobayashi. We talked about umami, the different whiskies, and what he was thinking of and combined it with what we were thinking of. So we sort of just layer those whiskies together. It&rsquo;s almost like a journey into the forest: [when] we would take one route and it wasn&rsquo;t right, we&rsquo;d come back to that V in the road and then take a different route with different combinations. Everything was done entirely in collaboration; it was a flavor journey together.

What is the flavor journey of Elusive Umami like, and how does it differ from the classic Johnnie Walker Blue Label?

Johnnie Walker Blue Label is so flavorful. It has a luxurious flavor. So you have quite a traditional smoke, and there&rsquo;s vibrancy, an effervescence that we get from some of those lighter, slightly younger fruity flavors. You&rsquo;ve got that depth; you&rsquo;ve got a rich, sherry type flavor that comes through. There&rsquo;s hazelnuts, there&rsquo;s chocolate. There&rsquo;s just a lot that&rsquo;s there, and it&rsquo;s very complex, and it&rsquo;s an amazing whisky.&nbsp;

With Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami, we&rsquo;re thinking about [all] that. When Chef Kobayashi was talking [about it], he was talking about flavor coming from the ocean and lands, and when he talked about Johnnie Walker Blue Label, [he said] it was almost like it was the ocean. That depth of character, the waves of flavor, and that quite intense smoke. But when he was thinking about how he would create a menu, it would almost take him more to the land. So there would be elements from the sea but more about that land.

[He also talked] very passionately about walking in the mountains, in the forest he grew up in in Nagano. Walking into the forest, you&rsquo;ve got that earth and its essence on your foot, the aromas in the trees, and the sun coming out. So that&rsquo;s what we were almost trying to recreate [with Elusive Umami], that walk into the forest with Chef.

I&rsquo;d say we looked at using Caol Ila, but when Chef described it [he said] it was almost acidic, and we&rsquo;d never thought of smoke in that way. Even though we&rsquo;re chemists, that bit was mind blowing. It was just a new perspective on a world that we knew so well. So yeah, everything we were building together was thinking more about the aromaticity, the layers, and that journey into the world of flavor. That&rsquo;s the way we sort of looked at it. It was with well-known whiskies, but just combining them like they were ingredients, working with them with a different perspective. That&rsquo;s actually been the joy &ndash; for me it&rsquo;s been a great honor learning and working with Chef Kobayashi.&nbsp;

It&rsquo;s fascinating when two artists or experts of different disciplines work together. What was it like working with Chef Kobayashi?

What I loved was that [our] worlds were so different but so similar. We were talking about the world of flavor, and there were so many similarities. We were so passionate. Even in different languages &ndash; there was a lot of hand waving, a lot of violent agreement, nodding of the head. [Laughs]. But it was amazing to hear how Chef would talk about how he thought about building a menu. How he thought about putting the ingredients together, the precision. It was just really interesting seeing someone with a gastronomy background trying the different whiskies and describing them, how he was just looking from that different perspective.&nbsp;

I think that&rsquo;s a really interesting part&hellip; it's our world of flavor, and Chef really recognized that we were the experts in whisky, but we were leaning into his expertise and his creation of ideas, and combining all of that together. And that&rsquo;s where it felt like it was really a coming together of equals. Craftspeople from different areas, creating a beautiful journey. And I think both of us are going to take away different aspects moving forward.&nbsp;

Speaking of building a menu, are there any specific foods or flavor profiles that are best enjoyed with Elusive Umami?

I think one of the things that&rsquo;s really beautiful about Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami is its approachable complexity. I think when we were talking to people as we were launching it, people pick out different aspects in there, and it shows how versatile it is, how many nuances there are. I think if you&rsquo;re creating a dish, if you&rsquo;re creating a menu that you love and you want to create something wonderful, Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami is going to work with that. It&rsquo;s going to reveal different things that you&rsquo;ve not seen before in the menu. And then the food is going to reveal different things that you haven&rsquo;t found yet in Elusive Umami. So I think it&rsquo;s just opening a wider world of flavor for us all.

Apart from having it with a meal, what would you say is the best way to enjoy Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami?

I think having it with a glass of ice water. So having that, having a sip of [the water] so that you hydrate, you cleanse, and you also cool the palette. It&rsquo;s almost like you&rsquo;re priming it, so that when you sip the whisky, you have this explosion of flavor. One of the serves that we absolutely think is wonderful is trying it with Oscietra caviar. You have that really intense flavor that&rsquo;s of salt, and of the creamy minerality, and that texture. Then when you have that sip of whisky, the whisky balances it so it becomes a little bit more oily, unctuous. It sweetens some of that intense flavor.&nbsp;

You mentioned that Johnnie Walker Blue Label evoked this strong memory for Chef Kobayashi. Does Elusive Umami evoke any special memories for you?

It was really interesting talking to Chef, when we were talking about umami. He was talking about it being part of the sense of taste, [but also] an emotion, a combination, a balance. Whenever we&rsquo;re talking about a whisky and the aromas, what it taps into is your memories and your emotions. I think that&rsquo;s what I love about Scotch whisky is that it&rsquo;s emotional. So think for me, when I nose the whisky, when I taste the whisky, it&rsquo;s mouthwatering and it&rsquo;s luscious. You get these lovely whiskies from Port Dundas from Cameron Bridge, and it does tie in with my memory of working at distilleries like Cameron Bridge, and it sort of ties to the pride and emotion of the people working there, creating [the whiskies]. So I love that you&rsquo;ve almost got that thread going right through that moment of creation in the whisky, to the moment of creation in Johnnie Walker.

What kind of memories do you hope people will make with Elusive Umami?

One of the things that I truly love about Scotch whisky and Johnnie Walker is when you nose a whisky, you&rsquo;re tapping into your treasure trove of memories. You might smell whisky and it reminds you of your grandparents, or you might smell whisky and it reminds you of a great event. So what I hope people take away from this, from Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami, is that it&rsquo;s about creating new memories. Tapping into what&rsquo;s gone before, but also creating a new trove of memories that you get to tap into in the future as well.

* * *&nbsp;&nbsp;

As Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami has revealed, perhaps the essence of umami lies in the unique memories of each person. To unlock and create great memories is to experience an exquisite and luxurious sensory experience &ndash; and Elusive Umami is the latest of Johnnie Walker&rsquo;s keys.

Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami is available in limited quantities in the Philippines. Get yours exclusively at S&amp;R, through the Diageo Private Sales Channel via diageoprestige.ph@diageo.com, or at <a href="https://www.singlemalt.ph/products/johnnie-walker-blue-label-umami" target="_blank" rel="noopener">singlemalt.ph</a>.&nbsp;

Drink responsibly. Visit the DrinkIQ.com site to learn more about alcohol facts.

The New Johnnie Walker Blue Label Elusive Umami Will Take You on an Epicurean Journey

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