Whatever Suntory paid for that, they got their money’s worth. The product placement in Bartender has been pretty hot and heavy from the beginning – every bottle (and there are a lot of them) bears the genuine label. But this was something else entirely – an episode that played like it was written by Suntory’s marketing department. I found it a little off-putting to be honest, although this was certainly playing on my home turf.
As noted earlier I prefer whisk(e)y to mixed drinks, so the theme here was very familiar to me. I also have a lengthy history with the Yamazaki Distillery. I live about 15 minutes away by train (I see it on the way to work every morning) but I’ve been visiting for years. Since I was coming to Japan on vacation, in fact. It is indeed in a lovely spot, you could do a self-guided tour for free, and the tasting library offered the chance to sample stuff like Yamazaki 25 and Hibiki 30 at a fraction of what a bar would charge. The gift shop never had any good bottles but it was still a great day.
That’s all over now, Baby Blue. Yamazaki is so popular with tourists that it’s basically impossible to get in without insider connections (as the episode alluded to). And J-whisky has skyrocketed so much in demand over the past decade that the library is now as overpriced as any whisky bar in Ginza anyway. One used to be able to buy bottles of Yamazaki 12-year for a few thousand Yen, but after discontinuing it altogether for a while to allow aged stocks to replenish Suntory raised the price on it six or sevenfold. As with the distillery itself, my days with the whisky are basically over.
As for the commercial episode itself, all the stuff Sasakura was saying about the process is basically true, but it was so wrapped up in lyrical puffery and sappy music that it was hard not to laugh. One should try new make spirit if they get the chance, though – if you’re a whisky drinker it’s quite an educational experience. The storyline with the bartender field trip and the romance angle for a character we’d never met did little for me. I’m also a little confused about why a guy with a Chinese name (possibly Singaporean) and a Japanese mother looks like a blond football player from Kansas.
Bartender is another series that I’m on the fence about that’s on the Patron Pick ballot, so I’m honestly not sure where I go from here. I may keep up with it by my own choice, it may win the poll, or I may decide there’s just not enough here to justify writing about weekly. It’s kind of ironic that the episode that finally focused on my chosen corner of the spirits world was the one I’ve found least interesting, though.
Nicc
May 3, 2024 at 7:15 amThis was indeed a strange episode and the only connective tissue to the previous one was when old man Kurushima was talking to Kuzuhara about something at the end of the episode and this was it. Otherwise, it feels like it was an OVA episode with the bartenders going on a field trip to the Yamazaki Distillery.
Alright, so we got our four young bartenders plus Miwa headed to said distillery. The newcomer to this episode is Kelvin, last seen quietly working behind the counter at Bar K. He gets lines here, but he’s terse when Kyouko is trying to chat him up. He’s pretty much like this for most of the episode. He seems to lack the social graces that we’d expect from a bartender. The implication is that he is a skilled bartender as I otherwise don’t see Mister Perfect putting up with this and so he asked a favor from old man Kurushima to bring him along for this field trip in hopes that he can learn something.
And it’s a fun adventure they have at the distillery, but Kelvin seems to be distracted by something. We see flashback from 12 years ago when he was visiting this area with his father and stayed at a ryokan. There he meets Chitose, who’s working there with her mom. They both have something in common in which their parents have already determined their futures for them. The backdrop is the Gion Matsuri, which is right around the corner. A promise to meet up for the festival doesn’t materialize and it’s something that he still regrets. He visits the inn now, but it’s been closed. Kelvin created his own future and became a bartender (In a hotel, no less. He couldn’t fully escape from that). We don’t see what happens to Chitose and it will add to the one-off nature of this episode if it stays that way.
In the meantime, Sasakura goes on a bar crawl (I presume all of the bars that he name-dropped are real ones) while Kyouko and Yuri have become good friends. Sasakura waxes poetic about the waters, which he uses a drop of in the whisky that he serves to Kelvin. Throughout the episode, I kept expecting an anime version of Bob Harris to show up with a bottle of Hibiki 17. He then looks towards the camera, as if he was Bogie in “Casablanca” saying, “Cheers to you guys,” Suntory time! He then walks away and everybody there wonders what that was all about. Agreed that it wasn’t really the best episode, but at least Kelvin got some character growth.