Ginger ale, tall over ice. Black tea (Earl Grey) with it.
Soba shochu is usually vacuum distilled and light, which is exactly the profile a highball flatters. The soba highball is a standard order in a soba restaurant, not an experiment.
One part shochu to three or four parts mixer, over plenty of ice. If it tastes thin, go two to three next time.
What it tastes like
Soba shochu from Kitsukura Shuzo in Nagano. Importer's tasting notes: rice. Nobody here has tasted this one, so the profile below is estimated from what its importer publishes rather than from the glass.
buckwheat
rice
cask
aged
koji
Sweet
1/5
Body
3/5
Aroma
4/5
Fruit
0/5
Floral
0/5
Grain
5/5
Earth
3/5
Umami
2/5
Base
80 percent buckwheat, 20 percent rice koji
Koji
yellow koji
ABV
40%
Aging
more than three years in oak casks
What to mix with it
Tap a family to narrow it down. Every suggestion carries its reasoning, so if the reasoning does not convince you, ignore the suggestion.
The gentle ginger. For bottles that a ginger beer would bully.
Soba shochu is usually vacuum distilled and light, which is exactly the profile a highball flatters. The soba highball is a standard order in a soba restaurant, not an experiment.
Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.
Gentler than ginger beer; right for a soft rice bottle
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.
Soba shochu is usually vacuum distilled and light, which is exactly the profile a highball flatters. The soba highball is a standard order in a soba restaurant, not an experiment.
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.
Soba shochu is usually vacuum distilled and light, which is exactly the profile a highball flatters. The soba highball is a standard order in a soba restaurant, not an experiment.
Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.
Shochu and soda over ice is the most ordinary drink in Japan
Dry cava or crémant. Acid and bubbles in one pour, which is exactly what a distilled spirit has none of.
Soba shochu is usually vacuum distilled and light, which is exactly the profile a highball flatters. The soba highball is a standard order in a soba restaurant, not an experiment.
Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.
Shochu and brut sparkling is a French 75 at lower proof; the acid is the point
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.
An earthy, heavy spirit flattens out without acid. This is the ingredient doing structural work, not decoration.
Buckwheat is nutty and low in acid, so citrus is doing structural work rather than adding a flavour.
The peel is doing what the orange twist on an old fashioned does
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.
An earthy, heavy spirit flattens out without acid. This is the ingredient doing structural work, not decoration.
Buckwheat is nutty and low in acid, so citrus is doing structural work rather than adding a flavour.
Softer acid than lemon, so the rice sweetness stays in the glass
Sakamoto's, fermented outdoors in earthenware jars in Fukuyama and aged at least a year; Toiro and Japanese Taste ship it in the US. A teaspoon in a mizuwari is the whole intervention, and a second one is usually a mistake.
An earthy, heavy spirit flattens out without acid. This is the ingredient doing structural work, not decoration.
Buckwheat is a savoury grain, and a soba restaurant already serves this spirit next to dashi.
Black vinegar is rice fermented with koji and then soured, so it is the same mould arriving a second time
Eden Foods sells it as Ume Plum Vinegar in most US supermarkets, and it is one of the cheapest things on this list. A bar spoon, and unlike a crushed umeboshi it can go into a shaken drink.
An earthy, heavy spirit flattens out without acid. This is the ingredient doing structural work, not decoration.
Buckwheat is a savoury grain, and a soba restaurant already serves this spirit next to dashi.
Salt and lactic acid land on the sweetness koji leaves behind
A plain or ginger kombucha. Acid, bubbles and a little funk, none of which survive a still.
Soba shochu is usually vacuum distilled and light, which is exactly the profile a highball flatters. The soba highball is a standard order in a soba restaurant, not an experiment.
No
Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.
The shortcut to a sour when there is no fresh lemon. Less sweet is better.
Soba shochu is usually vacuum distilled and light, which is exactly the profile a highball flatters. The soba highball is a standard order in a soba restaurant, not an experiment.
Sweet soda and aged notes argue
Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.
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.
An earthy, heavy spirit flattens out without acid. This is the ingredient doing structural work, not decoration.
Buckwheat is nutty and low in acid, so citrus is doing structural work rather than adding a flavour.
A dry tonic (Fever-Tree, Q). One part spirit, three parts tonic, a citrus wedge.
Soba shochu is usually vacuum distilled and light, which is exactly the profile a highball flatters. The soba highball is a standard order in a soba restaurant, not an experiment.
Tonic's sweetness fights aged notes
Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.
Shochu tonic: bitter, sweet, low proof, and better than it sounds
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.
Grain and roast are the same flavour arrived at twice, once by the still and once by the pan.
Both have spent years going quietly brown, and they meet in the middle
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.
Grain and roast are the same flavour arrived at twice, once by the still and once by the pan.
Barrel against barrel, except this one brings back the acid the cask took away
Roasted buckwheat, in any Japanese grocery, hot or cold. In a soba restaurant the same serve is made with soba-yu, the starchy water the noodles were boiled in, which is thicker and cannot be bought.
This bottle's aroma is the reason to own it, and a roasted or smoky mixer covers exactly that.
Roasted tea and buckwheat are one flavour from two plants. Hojicha and soba-yu are the same instinct.
Grain and roast are the same flavour arrived at twice, once by the still and once by the pan.
The one mixer that puts the bottle's own raw material back into the glass
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.
Heat is what makes buckwheat smell toasted rather than merely nutty, which is most of the reason to choose a soba shochu in the first place.
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.
An earthy, heavy spirit flattens out without acid. This is the ingredient doing structural work, not decoration.
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.
Soba shochu is usually vacuum distilled and light, which is exactly the profile a highball flatters. The soba highball is a standard order in a soba restaurant, not an experiment.
An aged bottle is the one you would not lengthen with a beer substitute
Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.
Zuiyo's Kuririn, from Japanese chestnuts at 11 percent, or Dover's wa-shu kuri, which is on a rum base. A dessert direction, and not the same thing as kuri shochu, which is a base spirit.
Grain and roast are the same flavour arrived at twice, once by the still and once by the pan.
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
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
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.
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.
Honey and buckwheat is a known pair, and buckwheat honey is the proof of it.
A drop of rose water, or a rose syrup. A drop; it takes over.
The nutty base will swallow a delicate flower unless the drink is otherwise very plain.
Ways to serve it
On the rocks
Mizuwari (with water)
Buckwheat shochu is nutty and quiet, and it is the one category where roasted things are the answer rather than a compromise. Hojicha and mugicha are better mixers for it than any fruit.
Cocktails other people made
Nobody has published 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 iichiko Saiten, which is a barley shochu, not a buckwheat shochu. We have this one as the less fruity of the two, which is what will move most in the glass.
·3 ounces buckwheat tea concentrate (see editor's note)
Written for iichiko Saiten, which is a barley shochu, not a buckwheat shochu. We have this one as the less fruity of the two, which is what will move most in the glass.
·1 ounce plus 5 teaspoons shochu, preferably iichiko saiten
·1/2 teaspoon mezcal, preferably fidencio joven
·3/4 ounce citrus blend (equal parts lemon and lime juice)
