Dekanta has released Acclaim – The Karuizawa Whisky Stage, a collection of three rare whiskies. (Photo: Dekanta)

This week, online specialist Japanese whisky bottler and retailer Dekanta unveiled Acclaim – The Karuizawa Whisky Stage, a collection of three rare Karuizawa single-malt whiskies — and the set is retailing for an astronomical price of $50,000.

Only 50 sets of the three bottles are available. They can be purchased online here.

For this release, Dekanta partnered with Karuizawa-based artist David Stanley Hewett and other craftspeople from Japan. The bottles are housed in a Wajima Lacquerware cabinet with 24-carat gold leaf layering. The bottle art is hand-painted by Hewett, with art celebrating the code of the Samurai and Japan’s martial history.

 “dekantā has made huge efforts to engage Japanese artists for their projects – their team really understands Japan and wants to support Japanese craftsmanship through their unique offerings,” Hewett said in a news release.

“Every step of this 18-month-long process required minute attention to detail and partnerships with many craftspeople. It has been a wonderful journey seeing those initial sketches turn into a work of art in the real world that I can touch and feel that is probably the most gratifying part of the process.”

The three 700-milliliter bottles in the collection were all distilled between 1999 and 2000 at Karuizawa in Japan. They are bottled at 60.8%, 61.1% and 61.4% ABV.

Karuizawa Distillery was built in 1956 but shut down in 2000. It was reopened in late 2022 in partnership with Dekanta.

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