Grappa di Barolo 2010 “Mizunara”: the Wood, the Label

The Grappa di Barolo 2010 “Mizunara” belongs to that category of products that demand time even beyond the bottle. We have introduced it – and now is the time to explore the paths that brought it to life, following the story of the wood that embraced it and the artistic gesture that now accompanies it.

The Wood
Mizunara (水楢), the “water oak,” is an endemic species native to northern Japan. Knotted and twisted, it grows slowly in cold, humid environments, developing an especially porous and irregular grain that makes it notoriously difficult to work with. Its availability is also extremely limited: trees require over 200 years before they can be harvested, and barrels made from Mizunara tend to be fragile and prone to evaporation. For these reasons, it is used only for the highest-grade aging processes – and only by a handful of producers worldwide.

The use of Mizunara for aging barrels dates back to World War II, when Japanese distilleries, responding to a growing demand for whisky from American troops and a shortage of imported casks, turned to this complex and long-lived native oak. What began as a technical necessity evolved into a stylistic choice: Mizunara barrels proved capable of imparting a completely original aromatic profile to spirits, with notes of sandalwood, incense, coconut, sweet spices, green tea, and white pepper – a perfect match for a contemplative finishing, able to engage in dialogue with the structure of grappa without overpowering it.

The Label
The label was designed by Japanese artist Hakuyu Watanabe, an entrepreneur and creative whose visual research moves between calligraphy and symbolic abstraction. The artwork is inspired by the study and practice of Bokkoku, a form of calligraphy that reinterprets ancient Chinese characters through gesture, ink, and the energy of the body.

Inspired by Master Kenryo Hara, Watanabe has made the sign a means of engraving meanings and sensations. For this label, she chose to represent the term Mizunara (水楢) by merging its two essential characters: mizu (water, 水) and nara (oak, 楢). Water is depicted as a central flow, surrounded by drops and puddles – one of which represents a grape berry. The oak character is a compound of two elements: the tree and the rooster. Yu (酉), the rooster, also evokes the shape of a sake barrel.

The work was created with brush and ink, using a technique that links artistic gesture to the body’s vital energy. The brush was not guided by the hand alone, but by full-body movement – expressing the strength of water, the vitality of wood, and the solidity of the cask. The result is a dense, dynamic sign that visually captures the sense of transformation and depth contained within the grappa itself.

The Grappa di Barolo 2010 “Mizunara” is released in 1,980 numbered bottles, each bearing the legacy of a journey spanning four decades, a wood steeped in ancient tradition, and an artistic sign that interprets its name with precision and sensitivity. Each bottle is housed in a dedicated case, created as a special edition – conceived as a small, rotating architectural structure: a slow, unfolding gesture that accompanies the bottle in motion, in harmony with the very nature of aging.

The result is a spirit that bridges distant lands and kindred visions – finding its ultimate form in the measure of time.