SEARCHING FOR INGREDIENTS

“Yanagikage” literally translates as “shade of the willow tree,” which sounds both elegant and cool. It is also known as “honnaoshi.” Either away, I wanted to taste this intriguing two-ingredient drink.

Early this summer, I made an amateur yanagikage at home, using high-end cooking mirin (make sure it’s hon-mirin if you want to try this) and everyday shochu. e result was oddly minty, like a sweet mouthwash. It wasn’t until mid-September that I tasted a yanagikage mixed by a professional, at a shochu media event hosted by the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association (JSS) at their Minato Ward, Tokyo, headquarters.

Mirin, like sake, is made from rice, but through a somewhat di erent process. Shochu can also be made from rice, but it is o en based on ingredients such as sweet potatoes, barley or soba. Being distilled, shochu is stronger. According to JSS data, sake has an alcohol content of around 15%, while shochu’s is around 25%.

e mirin labels I have seen generally show gures around 14%.

Shuso Imada, the JSS general manager, explained at the event that shochu can be distilled in two di erent ways. Traditional distillation at ordinary atmospheric pressure yields a “powerful and complex” spirit, while a more modern method of distillation at reduced pressure yields one that is “gentle and fruity.”

JSS manager Yusuke Koike, the evening’s bartender, concocted a basic yanagikage with a 1-to-1 ratio of mirin and shochu. He used a low-pressure shochu of the Gokuraku brand from the Hayashi Sake Brewery in

Kumamoto Prefecture. is brewery, according to its website, began making shochu in 1682.

e brand of mirin he used was called Me. It is available from Kanda Toshimaya Ltd., a company that traces its history all the way back to a drinking establishment that was set up on a bank of the Nihonbashi River in Edo in 1596.

Me is made speci cally for drinking. Kanda Toshimaya CEO Rintaro Kimura describes Me as a koji liqueur — with koji being the all-important mold that breaks rice starch down into sugar in the rst stages of the production of sake, shochu and mirin alike.

Kimura said his company aims for mirin to be globally recognized as the “third Japanese alcohol” a er sake and shochu, and that Me has already won prizes as a liqueur in international beverage competitions.

e yanagikage that Koike made was sweet, but notably less syrupy than the one I had made. Its color was clear and its avor was citrusy. He also made a second version with a third ingredient — a tonic — to moderate the sweetness and the alcohol content. Both versions were delicious.

On subsequent nights, I made two glasses of yanagikage at home, using two types of Fukumirin brand mirin from Fukumitsuya, a Kanazawa sake brewery founded in 1625, and sharp-scented Aka Kirishima sweet potato shochu from Miyazaki Prefecture-based Kirishima Shuzo Co., a relative newcomer with a history that dates back only to 1916.

A recipe on the Fukumitsuya website suggests a 1-to-2 ratio of mirin to shochu, served on the rocks.

e dark reddish Fukumirin turned a milky yellow-green when mixed with the shochu. It had a sweet, faintly tangy taste that reminded me of green apples.

e nearly black three-year-aged Fukumirin yielded a brown cocktail with a mellower avor, like caramel or maple.

Clearly there is a great deal of enjoyable experimentation waiting to be done in the yanagikage eld.

I’m just glad that I can make a cold drink with ice cubes from my freezer rather than lowering a bottle down a well — or lowering it over the side of a shing boat. Koda’s story would have me wondering what spooky things the bottle might encounter down in those cold, dark depths.

Talk about chilled spirits. Kampai! (Sept. 25)