JarBon

The gentle ginger. For bottles that a ginger beer would bully.

• Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.

A spicy one, not a sweet one. The mule format works for every dark shochu, and it is the most forgiving way to serve one.

• Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.

Cold, and fizzy enough to matter. One part shochu to three or four parts soda; if it tastes thin, go one to two next time.

• Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.

Dry cava or crémant. Acid and bubbles in one pour.

• Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.

Braulio, made in Bormio from gentian, juniper, peppermint and yarrow, around forty-five dollars. A summer drink on shochu and a winter one on whisky, which is one bottle behaving two ways.

• Oak rested and 21 percent, so half and half with a cask-aged bottle is one drink at about 23

Lustau or González Byass. Fino is salt and living flor; this is what is left after the flor dies, and at 18 percent an ounce lengthens the glass rather than strengthening it.

• Both have spent years going quietly brown, and they meet in the middle

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.

• Cask-aged bottles have the wood; apple has the orchard

Fresh in season, dried the rest of the year. Apricot and umeshu share a family, which is why they get along.

• Long aging turns a spirit towards stone fruit; the apricot joins what is already there

Ripe banana, muddled or as a syrup. Isoamyl acetate, the ester behind a ginjo aroma, is the same compound that makes a banana smell of banana.

• Cask-aged shochu and banana is a bourbon instinct

D.O.M. Bénédictine, on most back bars. Rounder and much sweeter than the alpine liqueurs, so it suits bottles that already lean sweet rather than clean.

• Wood and resin belong in the same stirred glass

Late summer fruit with a savory edge. For the deeper bottles.

• Cask and blackberry: think of a whisky smash

A few crushed pods, or a syrup. Floral, citrusy and warm at once; it bridges fruit and spice.

• Spice on aged, nutty notes

Cold-brewed chamomile as a lengthener, or steeped in the spirit.

• Chamomile is faint enough to be lost, and a smooth bottle leaves it the room it needs

The cordial, sweet and alcohol-free, poured like a syrup. Muscat, lychee and honey in one flower. The liqueur has its own entry below: a different product rather than a stronger or weaker version of this one, and it brings alcohol along with the flower.

• Nothing here is sharp enough to cut the elderflower down, so it survives at the strength it was poured

Fresh figs muddled, or fig jam. For the aged and the brown-sugar bottles only.

• Fig meets the dried fruit that kusu awamori and long aged shochu already carry

Fino or manzanilla. Savory, salty, bone dry.

• Oxidative on oxidative

Barrow's Intense, made in Brooklyn, or Domaine de Canton, which is the easier one to find. Ginger and sugar arrive together either way, and both work hot as well as cold. Being spirits themselves they add alcohol along with the volume, which a juice or a syrup does not.

• Warm spice against caramel, without the sugar a ginger beer brings

Diluted one to one with warm water so it mixes cold. A little goes far; taste before adding more.

• Honey and aged notes

Okinawan or Amami kokuto dissolved one to one in water. Molasses, minerals, a little salt.

• Cask and brown sugar is an old fashioned

Eaten whole, peel and all. Muddle a few in a glass; the peel gives bitterness, the flesh gives tartness.

• Kumquat's bitter peel stands up to aged, nutty notes

Blandy's or Barbeito, ten year. It is the one fortified wine that brings real acid, so it can do the lemon's job on a bottle where fresh citrus reads harsh.

• Barrel against barrel, except this one brings back the acid the cask took away

Luxardo. It is sweetened, whatever the name suggests: their own account of the process ends by adding a syrup of water and sugar to bring it to 32 percent. What makes it read as dry is the stone. The cherries sit in larch vats for up to three years, pits, leaves and all, before the lot is distilled and the heart rested in ash, and that almond bitterness arrives before the sugar does. So measure it as a sweetener that tastes bitter, not as a dry modifier, and a bar spoon changes a stirred drink completely.

• Maraschino is what makes a stirred aged drink taste finished rather than flat

Cointreau or a dry curaçao. The sweet-and-citrus half of any sour.

• Aged bottles and orange peel liqueur

Dried osmanthus flowers steeped, or the syrup. Apricot and honey, and the smell of October in Japan.

• Honeyed flower on honeyed age

Salt-pickled blossoms (rinsed) or sakura syrup. Floral, faintly almond, a touch of salt.

• Cherry blossom is the first thing a rough bottle destroys, and this one has no rough edge to do it with

A dried shiitake steeped in the spirit for a day. Savory and strange in the best way.

• A long aged spirit and dried mushroom share a forest floor note

One star, steeped, for the dark bottles.

• Anise and aged notes are a winter cabinet

A split bean in a syrup, or a good extract, in small amounts.

• Vanilla is what oak gives; more of it is coherent

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.

• The peel is doing what the orange twist on an old fashioned does
• 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.