The Best Japanese Alcohol You NEED To Try This Summer

Love or hate it, Japanese cuisine is undoubtedly classy - and this goes for their alcohol too! While known for their whisky, Japan offers a whole host of other refined alcoholic drinks, including sake, gin and plum liqueur! Now is the perfect time to explore the wide and wonderful world of Japanese drinks, so take a look over our top picks and try something out this summer!

Hibiki Japanese Harmony

A long time favourite of the Japanese whisky loving community, Hibiki Japanese Harmony is a delicately blended whisky made with malt whisky from Hakushu and Yamazaki distilleries and grain whisky from Chita distillery. It’s not just the beautiful cut glass bottle that makes this whisky so desirable, its tasting notes of honey, orange peel and dates make for a deliciously buttery, smooth sipping treat! With such a diverse range of flavours, this whisky certainly lives up to the ‘Harmony’ in its name and is light enough to be the perfect gift for a novice Japanese whisky drinker. 

Try with an orange rind and some soda water for a very harmonious highball!

Size: 700ml
ABV: 43%
Find here: UK £69.95 // US $99.99

Nikka Whisky From The Barrel

Whisky? From a barrel? Never…

Though the name may seem to be a friendly reminder as to how the whisky was made, Nikka’s intention with ‘Whisky From The Barrel’ is actually to make you feel as if you are one of the blenders trying the whisky straight ‘from the barrel’. Even the bottle itself oozes luxury, its simple white label reminiscent of an expensive perfume bottle - but with a much less hefty price tag! More than 100 different batches of malt and grain whiskies are blended to create a very rich and flavourful whisky. The notes of dried fruits, spices and caramel are present alongside a heavy kick of alcohol - so you might want to give it a go with an ice cube. However you choose to drink it though, Nikka Whisky is one to pop in your basket ASAP.

Size: UK 500ml // US 750ml
ABV: 51.4%
Find here: UK £43.95 // US $89.99

Roku Gin

Another beautiful bottle containing another beautiful drink… In English, Roku translates to the number six - which is the same number of local botanicals used alongside eight gin botanicals in Roku Gin. The Japanese yuzu fruit is a standout flavour among the botanicals, and the delicate balance of flavours makes Roku a gin you’ll want to take neat. However, cocktails fans despair not - it’s also been known to make an extremely delicious martini! Get your hands on one of these flower engraved bottles today and transport yourself to Japan without having to pay for a plane ticket!

Size: 700ml
ABV: 43%
Find here: UK £28.84 // US $35.99

Aldi Shirayuki Japanese Sake

Yep, you’re not going mad - that’s Aldi making their own exclusive sake (and selling it for a fiver - which is more than three times cheaper than the same size bottle at Selfridges)! Launched for the Tokyo Summer Olympics, Aldi’s sake from Japan’s Itami region is being marketed as ‘an adventurous alternative to dry white wine’. While sake is the perfect companion to traditional Asian cuisine - Aldi’s even promoting it to be drunk alongside a cheeky fish and chips and we couldn’t agree with this match more! Check out our beginners guide to sake link at the bottom of the article to see what else sake pairs well with!

Unfortunately for our international friends, the Shirayuki Japanese Sake is only available in Aldi stores across the UK - but you’re very welcome to hop on a plane and grab a bottle! This release has got us super excited to see what Aldi’s got up its sleeve in the future...

Size: 300ml
Find here: In an Aldi store near you!

Akashi-Tai Shiraume Umeshu

Made from steeping plums in liquor and sugar, umeshu is often mislabelled as plum wine - it’s not wine made from fermented plums, it’s alcohol infused with plums. Umeshu is closer to a liqueur in how it's made, but in taste has been compared to a vermouth or a fortified wine. Though it’s pretty easy to make at home - Akashi-Tai Shiraume Umeshu is a properly tasty pick if you don’t want to wait the three months or more that infusion takes. Shiraume has been made with premium sake as the base alcohol. Take it chilled in the garden this summer, but look forward to drinking it warm for a cozy winter treat.

Size: 500ml
ABV: 14%
Find here: UK £19.25 // US $25.99

Whatever you’re looking to drink to end the summer, Japan can offer something a bit different to spice up your cocktails and diversify your collection. There are loads more to discover than just our top picks, so make sure you share some of your favourite finds over on our socials at @thethreedrinkers! 

If you’d like to read about sake in more detail including recommended bottles and what to pair them with then check out our Beginner’s Guide to Sake!

Around the World in 6 Whiskies

Words by Katie Groves

Katie Groves, the new bar manager at whisky lover’s heaven ‘Milroy's’ in London Soho, is lamenting the lack of travel but consoling herself with a whisky tasting tour from around the world. Here are her suggestions for creating your very own world whisky flight. All aboard!

Think back to very early 2020, when some of us may have had a tiny sulk about something like a cancelled holiday. There was an inkling that something bigger was about to happen, but we were still in a dream-like stage of mourning cheap wine on sunny terraces, gorging on tagine under the stars or sinking cold pints in a random European bar. Surely this would all blow over soon?

Mere weeks later, and the whole world was changing fast. In collective lockdown madness, we were mostly doing 3 things: baking bad banana bread, freaking out over Zoom and panic-buying British apocalypse essentials: pasta, toilet roll and alcohol, apparently.  Our home alcohol shelves, bars, or cabinets had never looked so desperately empty, but you couldn’t order off Majestic, Tesco’s queue was too big and that old bottle of Bell’s had never looked quite so appealing.

Drinks Nostalgia

Several months, drinks and meltdowns later and we’ve nearly made it through 2020. Holidays (or lack of) may have lower priority now, but we are all still dreaming of our favourite escapes. Keeping calm and carrying on can take up a fair bit of effort, and I don’t know about you, but I’m still reminiscing about slurping on gelato, guzzling cold beer like there’s no tomorrow and lapping up the sunshine like a lazy cat.

What can we do instead? The pleasures of meeting people from another culture and tasting their food and drink can never quite be replicated from home, but here’s the next best thing. (It’s known as the water of life, so that’s got to be something good!) So, kick your feet up and enjoy a flight around the world with these delicious and diverse whiskies. We all know that our sense of smell and taste, just like music, can be one of our most powerful tools for nostalgia and imagination, so pour that dram, get some records on and enjoy some downtime like it’s 2019…

All aboard! Around the world in 6 whiskies

Nikka Days - Japan

Like the food, whisky and just about everything else, Japan is famed for its beautiful label designs. This striking sunny box says lazy days at the beach and this easy-going whisky delivers just that. This is Nikka’s most recent release for the happy price-point, casual whisky drinker market and consists of grain and malt whiskies from their two contrasting distilleries: Miyagikyo and Yoichi.

Miyagikyo’s Coffey still grain whisky is creamy and vanilla-sweet; their malt is floral and honeyed, while Yoichi distillery produces a single malt that is coastal and lightly peated.

Blending these creates glowing notes of apricots, yellow plums and peach, subtle buttery malt and just a whisker of peat to tie all those lighter flavours together. A well balanced, shelf-staple blend that will convince all your friends to like whisky (try a highball)

Find Nikka Days at Master of Malt here for £38.83

Starward Solera- Australia

This whisky from Victoria-based Starward distillery lives up to its dreamy packaging. This is a colourful and complex single malt with an autumnal spectrum of spiced, fruity and earthy notes. Just breathing in those intense deep aromas hits you with a happy stick! This was aged in ex Apera wine casks (Australia’s answer to sherry), and bottled at a mellow 43%. A perfect whisky for wine and sherry fans who want to feel like they’ve jumped on a plane to languish in Australia’s wine-indulgent climate. Onward, ho!

Find Starward Solera at Master of Malt here for £47.25

Paul John Classic - Goa

With its vibrant array of cultures, sublime beaches and intense humidity punctuated with monsoons, Goa is a place like no other. This whisky will take you there: think ginger and cardamom, cacao powder and lime zest, sea salt caramel and a wave of heat from its no-messin’ high strength (55.2%!) Made from Indian 6-row barley and aged in ex-bourbon casks, this sure is a unique dram, putting India firmly on the map for great single malts. 

Find it at Master of Malt here for £55.96

Mackmyra Grönt Te - Sweden

This elegant single malt is the years-in-the-making brainchild of master blender Angela D’Orazio, who teamed up with Japanese tea specialists Yoko Ono Sthlm to create this expression. The whisky was aged in casks seasoned with a blend of three teas that had been infused into a neutral liqueur, creating fragrant herbs, spices and delicate green notes. A beautiful result, which enmeshes Swedish and Japanese culture – and doubles up on those antioxidants from this sustainability-conscious distillery.

Find it at Master of Malt here for £52.95

Kavalan Concertmaster Port Finish - Taiwan

Since opening in 2005, Taiwan’s first single malt distillery has gone from strength to strength, picking up multiple top awards along the way. Aged under Taiwan’s intense seasonal climate, this whisky had an initial snooze in ex-bourbon casks before final aging in port pipes. The angels’ share here is a greedy 10 – 12%, which means fast maturation and bottling young. But its complexity belies its age. Enjoy the notes of strawberry, black pepper, spiced chocolate and dried mango. A unique and juicy whisky so mellow that you could pretty much pour it on your breakfast cereal.

Find it at Milroy’s here for £64.94

Banana bread Manhattan - England

Since we mentioned Banana Bread, we couldn’t resist telling you about a bottled cocktail version; the Banana Bread Manhattan! Made by Liquid Intellect, it combines rye whiskey and vermouth, infusing them with natural banana bread flavours (what is this strange magic?). Pour it over ice cream or just stick it on ice. It’ll take you straight back to Grandma’s kitchen. Where else would you rather be?

Find the Banana Bread Manhattan at Master of Malt here for £25.50

If you liked this, try The Best of Whyte and Mackay, Which Rye Whisky should I try? or find our more about this shipwreck whisky auction. Also, don’t forget to visit Milroy’s in person for a huge selection of drams from all around the world or check out their website for details of virtual and live whisky tastings!