This is a liqueur rather than a base spirit. It is already sweetened, so treat the suggestions below as a starting point and go easier on anything else sweet.
flavored
liqueur
Pour this first
Lemon soda (ramune, Sanpellegrino), tall over ice. Grapefruit with it.
These bottles already have one strong flavour in them. Soda gives it room instead of competing with it.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it. Bitter, bright and forgiving. Ruby or white both work; white is drier. The grapefruit sour is a real bar order in Japan, not a novelty.
One part shochu to three or four parts of the long mixer, over plenty of ice, then the accent on top. If it tastes thin, go two to three next time.
What it tastes like
Made with fresh-pressed sudachi juice from Tokushima, and it keeps the citrus's bitterness rather than sanding it off, which is what keeps it interesting past the first few sips. Light-bodied and aromatic rather than just acidic.
citrus
bright
bitter
crisp
clean
Sweet
1/5
Body
1/5
Aroma
4/5
Fruit
3/5
Floral
1/5
Grain
1/5
Earth
not described
Umami
not described
Read from the words above rather than measured. Where it says not described, none of the sources behind this page mention it, which is not the same as it not being there.
Base
korui shochu with sugars and Tokushima sudachi juice
ABV
20%
What to mix with it
This bottle is made with citrus, not merely reminiscent of it. A mixer meets the citrus first and the grain second, so read these as answers to the citrus rather than to the barley or the rice. Tap a family to narrow it down. Every suggestion carries its reasoning, so if the reasoning does not convince you, ignore the suggestion.
A longer wedge is a family we'd reach for sooner with this bottle, worked out from its flavours rather than tasted. It isn't a score, or a comparison with other bottles.
Hoppy Beverage Co. has made it in Tokyo since 1948; at 0.8 percent it is legally a soft drink, and it is hard to find outside Japan. Chill the bottle, the shochu and the mug and no ice is needed.
These bottles already have one strong flavour in them. Soda gives it room instead of competing with it.
It was built around neutral shochu, and that is still where it fits best
Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.
Juice and peel are two different tools. Fresh juice, never bottled, is the whole basis of the lemon sour and the quickest way to put acid into a distilled base. The peel expressed over the top gives the oil and no acid at all, which is what a sweet or roasted bottle usually wants instead.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Lemon sharpens a crisp bottle further
Acid frames a single strong flavour and keeps it from turning syrupy.
A Miyazaki citrus eaten with the white pith left on, which is sweet rather than bitter. Gentler and more floral than lemon, so it flavours a drink without taking it over.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Mild enough that a light bottle is still the thing you taste
Acid frames a single strong flavour and keeps it from turning syrupy.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Oita's citrus, softer than sudachi. Bartenders in Oita mix it with the local barley shochu and soda.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Milder than sudachi, so it does not fight a delicate bottle
Acid frames a single strong flavour and keeps it from turning syrupy.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Okinawa's own citrus, picked green and sharp, more bitter than lime and more floral than sudachi. Squeezed over awamori and soda it is what the islands actually drink.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Sharper and more bitter than a lime, which is what keeps it from disappearing into a light bottle
Acid frames a single strong flavour and keeps it from turning syrupy.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
A small green citrus from Tokushima, sharper and more herbal than lime. Sold frozen or as juice in Japanese markets.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Sudachi's green sharpness shows best on a clean bottle
Acid frames a single strong flavour and keeps it from turning syrupy.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Torn leaves steeped briefly. Perfumed citrus without juice.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Intense citrus perfume on a clean bottle
Torn leaves steeped briefly. Perfumed citrus without juice.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Bitter orange: sour and aromatic rather than sweet, the citrus that goes into ponzu. Bottled juice is sold for cooking and works straight in a glass. Use the peel too, it carries most of the smell.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Acid frames a single strong flavour and keeps it from turning syrupy.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Sweet, low-acid Japanese mandarin. Juice it or drop segments in a glass. It needs a squeeze of something sharper alongside.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Acid frames a single strong flavour and keeps it from turning syrupy.
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
A pinch of ground sansho over the top, or a few peppercorns steeped. Numbing, citrusy, green.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Sansho is citrus peel and pepper in one seed
Sansho and yuzu turn up together in Japanese seasoning
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Jack Rudy's Extra Bitter, made with real cinchona bark, or Small Hand Foods'. Half a teaspoon and soda, set to the bottle in front of you rather than to a tonic maker's idea of a spirit.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
You set the sugar yourself, which makes it the easiest way to a bitter highball that's genuinely dry
This is a light bottle and this is a heavy ingredient. It will not taste bad, it will taste like the ingredient.
Jack Rudy's Extra Bitter, made with real cinchona bark, or Small Hand Foods'. Half a teaspoon and soda, set to the bottle in front of you rather than to a tonic maker's idea of a spirit.
Food-grade citric and malic powder from the canning aisle, 10 grams whisked into 100 grams of cold water; two parts citric to one malic is close to lime. Some bartenders find a drink with no juice in it thin, so it is worth trying both ways.
A clean bottle has nowhere to hide, so acid reads as brightness rather than as a correction
Cold-pressed juice or thin slices. Green apple is already in the aroma of a lot of rice shochu, so this amplifies what is there rather than adding something new.
Small Hand Foods', or sugar, water and gum arabic from the baking aisle at home. Worth knowing that most Japanese gum syrup on a shelf today has no arabic gum in it at all.
It puts the body back without adding more sugar, which is the other way to fix it
Hot water in the glass first, spirit poured on top so it mixes itself. Around 40C in the glass is the sweet spot. This is not the only way, it is one way.
Water dilutes the botanical without adding anything to argue with it. Useful when the bottle is strong enough that soda would only make it louder.
Hana Makgeolli is brewed in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; Makku sells a canned one. Strength varies widely across the category, from around 6 percent in a can to the mid teens for an unfiltered takju, so read the label before deciding how much to pour.
Its lactic tang keeps a crisp bottle from going flat as the ice melts
Dewazakura's from Yamagata plums, or Machida Shuzo's on Amami kokuto shochu. It does umeshu's job and leaves the glass drier, which matters when the bottle is already sweet.
Acid and colour at once, and the drink stays drier than it would with umeshu
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
The Kyushu condiment, in a tube in any Japanese grocer: fermented yuzu peel, green chili and salt. A quarter teaspoon stirred into an oyuwari, which is the serve Asahi publishes.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Fermented peel gives citrus without the acid a fresh yuzu would add
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
The Korean-style yuzu preserve sold in jars. A spoon in hot water with shochu, or shaken cold.
Citrus is in this bottle, not just on its nose, so this doubles it rather than introducing it.
Yuzu peel, sweetened, on a citrus bottle
Harder to find outside Japan than most of this list. Worth ordering or a trip to a Japanese grocery, and where something easier works as well, that comes first.
Fronds, gently muddled. For the savory, saline glass.
Fronds, gently muddled. For the savory, saline glass.
Ways to serve it
With soda
On the rocks
Mizuwari (with water)
These are shochu with one loud idea in them, shiso or sesame or yuzu. Treat that flavour as the drink's and everything else as its frame, and do not try to add a second loud idea.
Cocktails other people made
We haven't found a cocktail written for this exact bottle. These were written for other bottles, so each one says which, and what changes if you pour this instead.
Written for Tantakatan Shiso Shochu, a different bottle. We have this one as the more fruit-forward of the two, which is what will move most in the glass.
