Here’s one way to find the spirit of the season.

To get to the magical spot, you’ve got to travel a very long way, walk through wooded hills and past a crystal clear lake. Step into a building which has been in use since 1923. Move through a huge cellar, where some 2000 barrels, specially crafted of Spanish oak and previously used for storing sherry, are slowly aging the product. Finally, you arrive at the tasting room. A bartender artfully carves an ice cube the shape and size of a baseball and places it in a glass. And pours over it a serving of golden liquor. You take a sip, and are immediately overwhelmed by a taste that has been described as “near indescribable genius.”

You just enjoyed the finest whisky in the world, which was just chosen by the world’s most prominent critic, Jim Murray, in his Whisky Bible 2015.

But here’s the thing. You’re not in Scotland. Or Canada. Or Kentucky.

You are in Japan. That’s right, the finest whisky on Earth is being created in a distillery just outside Kyoto. It’s Yamazaki’s Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013, which is created by chief blender Shinji Fukuyo. He’s been honing his craft here since the 1980’s, when globe-trotting Japanese executives first acquired a taste for whisky. And he claims his whisky gets its character from a combination of the local water, which has an incredible mineral softness, and hot summers which make for a complex, deep aroma. But whether it’s the water, the weather, those sherry casks or Fukuyo’s talent, Yamazaki beat out over 1000 other distillers to become Japan’s first-ever whisky champion.

And what do they think of this back in the home of whisky? Well, not only did Scotland not win this year’s competition, they didn’t even make the top 5. The second and third place finishers came from the same distiller, Buffalo Trace, out of Kentucky. And there are award-winners from such places as New Zealand and Taiwan. It’s a dizzying diversification of distilling.

So, perhaps not coincidentally, the news recently featured another story, out of a small Scottish town called Dreghorn. Here a local craft brewer called Arran has been making award-winning beers for over a decade. And they’ve never distilled whisky. But lately they’ve been importing some unique equipment from Japan, and making sizeable purchases of rice.

They’ve just applied for approval to become Scotland’s first brewer of sake.