March 16, 2020
Whisky. Or for where I am from, Whiskey
Two summers ago I started drinking whisky highballs. I found the drink to be very refreshing and not too filling on a hot Tokyo summer day. Sometimes in the heat of August I just cannot drink much beer as it is too hot. Highballs turned out to be a nice alternative. Honestly, until three years ago, I never even liked whiskey. The reason was probably because I had only had cheap American bourbon. It would be like not liking wine because all you had ever tried was Ripple or some other high-alcohol fortified wine. The rotgut stuff you might see people in America drinking while camped under a bridge.
My distaste for whiskey changed when a friend from Portland let me taste some of his American single malt whiskey. My friend is a former beer maker who progressed to the next challenge, distilling his un-hopped beer into whiskey. After tasting it I became a fan and have helped get his brand, Westward Whiskey, into the market here in Japan. I have since discovered how wonderful other whiskies can be, both Scotch as well as many Japanese “expressions,” the word used for different whiskey (or whisky) versions or variations.
Enough backstory: Now to what made me write this!
A couple nights ago I met a friend for dinner in Asakusabashi. We weren’t looking for anything fancy, just something decent and not too expensive. We ended up at a soba shop I had some how managed to never visit. I honestly thought I had been to every soba-ya in Chūō-ku and Taitō-ku, as well as most of them within one or two km of the Sumida River. But not this place. As usual, I had eaten soba for lunch so I ordered just the tenpura and sake set (¥1,000) while my friend had a beer and ten-kake soba (hot soba with tenpura). Afterwards we walked back towards the station to an interesting place we had passed earlier, a shop called Hicra that has high balls and craft beer, a very inviting combination.
We were able to get two seats at the counter. The menu offers perhaps twenty-five or more different whiskies as well as seven or eight different soda waters. There are the basic inexpensive Japanese whiskies, as well as high end bottles, including Ichiro’s Malts grain whisky and some imports as well. As for the beer, I think there were ten or twelve selections, both imported and locally brewed.
The name Hicra is a combination of high ball and craft beer—Hi + cra =Hicra. There is a sister bar around the corner called Rumcra which features, as you may have guessed, Craft beer and rum.
Earlier that day I happened to be passing through Ginza and decided to stop by Ginza Three Seven, a common nickname for the Liquor Mountain shop located at Ginza 7-7-7. I was curious to see how Westward Single Malt was selling, or being tasted. I ordered a small pour (¥300) and as I was drinking it I saw something to my left that pretty well shocked me; a floor to ceiling display case filled with a dream selection of fine Japanese whiskies (with a few bottles of scotch as well). It looked like all of the age statement whiskies that have been in the pipeline for the past ten years or so have now been released, just as expected and in time for the Olympics. But they weren’t cheap. What was really surprising was the number of rare old whiskies from dinosaur distilleries, places that are now defunct and extinct. There were statements from Hanyu as well as Karuizawa and a couple others I had only read about and had never seen. The most expensive whisky were some bottles of Ichiro’s Five of Clubs (from his playing card series of labels for old Hanyu whiskies made by his grandfather) priced at one million yen a bottle.
Seeing these special bottles out on display made me wonder if the timing was just coincidental or if it might have something to do with there not being any wealthy Chinese or Hong Kong shoppers in Tokyo right now, people who would likely buy out all of the bottles in a matter of minutes. I have been in 777 before when Chinese tourists try their best to communicate that they want more than just the one bottle of whisky they have picked out, even when the price is in the thousands of dollar range. For the time being, anyway, there are once again super premium Japanese whiskies on the market. Too bad the prices are no longer what they were ten years ago.