Noguchi Sakekasu Shochu

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.

A bar spoon, not an ounce. It is very sweet, and its job here is the almond smell rather than the sugar.

• Marzipan against caramel, which is a dessert people already eat

Montenegro, Nonino, Averna. Equal parts with a dark shochu over ice is a whole drink.

• Amaro and aged notes are a winter bar

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

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

Rothman and Winter, or a Japanese anzu liqueur. Closer to umeshu than to a candy liqueur if you buy a good one.

• Long aging turns towards stone fruit anyway; this meets it there

Angostura or a Japanese aromatic. Two dashes.

• Two dashes wake up an aged bottle

Cold-brewed Earl Grey brings bergamot; plain black tea brings tannin. For the aged and brown-sugar bottles.

• Black tea's tannin sits well with aged notes

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

• Spice on aged, nutty notes

Fresh in early summer; morello or amarena in syrup otherwise. Dark cherry for aged bottles, bright cherry for sparkling.

• Dark cherry against aged, oxidative notes

A stick in hot water with the spirit, or a light syrup. Winter.

• Cinnamon and aged notes are a hot toddy

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

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

Dark, in small amounts, for the cask and sweet-potato bottles.

• Maple and aged, caramel notes

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

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

Carpano Antica or Cocchi. A quarter of the shochu's volume, stirred cold, makes a manhattan-style drink: on a 25 percent shochu that is about 23 before the ice gets to it, where a 40 percent rye starts nearer 35.

• An aged bottle already has the caramel a manhattan wants; this brings the botanicals

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.