TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Japanese contemporary artist Takahide Komatsu has collaborated with Kavalan Distillery on the label design for its latest Mizunara Oak whisky collection, uniting rare Japanese oak-matured spirits with original artwork inspired by Taiwan’s native butterflies.
The limited-edition Kavalan Mizunara Oak Single Cask Strength collection features two expressions: one from unpeated malt and one from peated malt, offering contrasting interpretations of maturation in rare Japanese oak casks, per a Kavalan press release. Each bottle showcases Komatsu’s specially commissioned paintings of 12 butterfly species, reflecting Taiwan’s biodiversity and the grace of butterflies in flight.
Komatsu, based in Miyazaki Prefecture, is known for works centered on ecosystems and butterflies. His pieces have been exhibited internationally and collected by institutions including the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
For this project, he described the label art as distilling years of observation into an object that can be held, opened, and passed down.
He noted Taiwan’s status as one of the world’s great butterfly habitats and highlighted migratory links between the two places, such as the chestnut tiger butterfly, which departs Taiwan each May for Miyazaki.
Japanese oak grows in cool northern Japanese forests and often requires more than a century before it can be crafted into casks. Its porous grain makes coopering exceptionally difficult, contributing to the wood’s rarity, according to the press release.
When Kavalan’s new-make spirit matures in Taiwan’s warm, humid climate, the whisky is said to develop notes of sandalwood, incense, and coconut alongside the distillery’s signature tropical fruit aromas.
King Car Group Chair Y.T. Lee (李玉鼎) was quoted as saying, “Mizunara oak is one of the rarest and most demanding casks in whisky making … Through Takahide Komatsu’s butterfly artwork, this release also celebrates the richness of Taiwan’s natural world.”
Lee is the son of King Car Group founder Lee Tien-tsai (李添財), whose company founded Kavalan in Yilan County in 2005. It has since won hundreds of international awards, including World Whiskies Awards and International Whisky Competition “Whisky of the Year” titles.
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