These bottles already have one strong flavour in them. Soda gives it room instead of competing with it.
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
Shochu from Takahashi Shuzo in Kumamoto. Importer's tasting notes: citrus, plum. Nobody here has tasted this one, so the profile below is estimated from what its importer publishes rather than from the glass.
citrus
plum
Sweet
1/5
Body
2/5
Aroma
4/5
Fruit
2/5
Floral
0/5
Grain
2/5
Earth
1/5
Umami
1/5
Base
honkaku shochu with Japanese ume, Dekopon citrus juice, sugar and citric acid
ABV
10%
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.
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.
Carbonation carries aroma up out of the glass, so a highball shows an aromatic bottle off rather than diluting the point of it.
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.
Acid frames a single strong flavour and keeps it from turning syrupy.
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.
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.
Acid frames a single strong flavour and keeps it from turning syrupy.
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.
Acid frames a single strong flavour and keeps it from turning syrupy.
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.
Tart red plum rather than ume, so it lands on the note without umeshu's cooked sugar
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.
The brine off the umeboshi barrel, so it is the same fruit in a form you can measure
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.
Fermented peel gives citrus without the acid a fresh yuzu would add
Slapped, not muddled to bits. Mint reads as cold, which makes any low-proof drink feel more refreshing.
Only where the herb agrees with the bottle's own botanical. Shiso on shiso works; rosemary on shiso does not.
Ways to serve it
With soda
On the rocks
These are shochu with one loud idea in them, shiso or sesame or green tea. Treat the botanical as the drink's flavour and everything else as its frame, and do not try to add a second loud idea.
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.