What it is made from

Honkaku shochu is distilled once, which is why it still tastes of its raw material. That one fact decides most of what belongs in the glass with it. Six bases and one catch-all, in the order you are most likely to meet them.

Imo shochu
161 bottles · 20–44.2% · 7 tasted at Juraku
Sweet potato shochu is the one people are told they have to drink with hot water. Hot water is genuinely good, and it is also the hardest first sip to sell. Start it long and cold with soda and a wedge of grapefruit, and come back to the hot water once you like the spirit.
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Mugi shochu
100 bottles · 18–43% · 2 tasted at Juraku
Barley is the easiest shochu to hand to someone who has never had any. It behaves like a clean grain spirit with a little cereal sweetness, so a highball with lemon needs no explaining and no apology.
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Kome shochu
70 bottles · 20–41% · 3 tasted at Juraku
Rice shochu is what happens when you distil something very close to sake. It carries the same apple and melon aromatics, which makes it the shochu that behaves most like a white spirit in a stirred drink.
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Kokuto shochu
27 bottles · 20–43% · 4 tasted at Juraku
Brown sugar shochu is legally only made on the Amami islands, and it is a cane spirit in everything but name. Every rum drink you know is available to it at two thirds the alcohol.
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Soba shochu
10 bottles · 25–40% · 2 tasted at Juraku
Buckwheat shochu is nutty and quiet, and roasted things meet it on its own terms rather than covering it. Hojicha and mugicha pick up the nuttiness; citrus and ginger work differently, by cutting the quiet rather than matching it.
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Awamori
108 bottles · 15–60% · 7 tasted at Juraku
Awamori is older than mainland shochu. What defines it is black koji and an all-koji mash, not the Thai rice nearly every distillery happens to use. The law says as much: rice koji made with black koji, and water, distilled in a single-type still. It takes citrus and tropical fruit well. It takes milk well too, a serve you'll find in Okinawa.
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Korui, the continuous-still shochu
6 bottles
Korui is shochu defined by the still rather than by what it is made from: a continuous column strips out most of what a pot still leaves in, and the law caps it below 36 percent. That is why it is the house base for a lemon sour. Buy it for what you are going to put in it.
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Kasutori, chestnut and other bases
39 bottles · 10–40% · 2 tasted at Juraku
The bases with no family of their own: sake lees, chestnut, corn. There are no style rules on this page, which is deliberate. What each bottle is described as tasting of is doing the whole job, so the suggestions come from that rather than from anything the category is supposed to want.
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Shiso, sesame, yuzu and other flavoured shochu
10 bottles · 7–25% · 4 tasted at Juraku
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.
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