The Yamazaki Distillery Gift Shop stocks the distillery’s own line of snack foods exclusively. These snacks are said to go particularly well with whisky, but not being fans of the taste of whisky, these bags of Jokki Yamazaki Whisky Barrel Smoked Salmon Jerky caught our eye instead. As the name and packaging suggest, the salmon is smoked in old whisky barrels from the distillery.
After the oak barrels have served their role in maturing whisky, the barrels are broken down into wood chips and used to smoke salmon from Hokkaidō, a region known for its seafood generally and salmon in particular. The wood chips are infused with the scent of Yamazaki Whisky, which then imparts its flavour to the salmon during smoking. The smoking is done at low temperatures to dry the salmon thoroughly, a process that changes the protein to amino acids, a component of umami.
Each bag contained around 10 strips of salmon jerky, which are a deep orange-red colour.
A strong fishy aroma came through on opening the packaging, a result of the concentrating of flavours from the smoking process. The aroma is pleasant, though, and recalled a more intense version of the fresh fatty salmon. Upon tasting, the salmon jerky has a deep savoury flavour that developed with soft notes of oily salmon as you continue eating. To an extent, the salmon jerky retains its flaky texture, although it also has the chewiness of beef jerky. We’re not familiar enough with the flavour of whisky, or salmon jerky really, to be able to identify the difference created by smoking in whisky barrels but we do know when something is tasty, and this jerky is tasty.
This Jokki Yamazaki Whisky Barrel Smoked Salmon Jerky contained 40 g. It was produced in Japan and purchased in Kyōto, Japan in 2018.