Yamazaki Whisky with Banshaku Ice Balls

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed)
Aug 5th 2009 at 2:05PM

Yamazaki Single Malt, from Japanese whisky giant Suntory (which you may remember from Lost In Translation), is by far the best of world's can't-call-it-Scotches. So it's no wonder they've come up with a better way to drink it as well: with perfect spheres of ice 2" in diameter.

They don't melt as fast as our inferior American ice cubes, so they keep the drink at an optimum temperature longer without watering it down as much. An important Banshaku ("evening drink") ritual in Japan, apprentice bartenders in the high-end joints there must learn to carve them flawlessly from big blocks of ice.

They don't do that here unfortunately, but the MoMA store has a stock of imported plastic molds that do the trick quite well (right). You need a bottle of Yamazaki to get the full Land of the Rising Sun effect, though; their 12-year-old is $40 and 18-year-old is $100.

Tags: cocktails, Japan, Scotch, single malt, SingleMalt, Suntory, whisky, Yamazaki

Filed under: Spirits

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

GlobalDia Aug 5th 2009 4:11PM

so whats so special about round icecubes that they dont melt as fast as regular ones?

Jimmy Aug 5th 2009 4:55PM

It's just physics. A sphere has the lowest surface area to volume ratio of any shape. In this case, that results in the slowest melting "icecube" possible.

JPS Aug 5th 2009 5:39PM

What he said. You definitely need to have the right sized glass as well, not a whole lot bigger than the ice ball.

Japanese whisky Aug 7th 2009 8:06AM

The machines that make these ice balls are actually a way of producing an inferior copy of the ice balls you meet in Tokyo cocktail bars. In Japan, they hand chip the ice with a little pick. These devices create circular iceballs without chipping. The difference? The physics is the same but when you have a barman who can chip a perfect sphere you know you have a skilled individual in front of you. With a machine, you probably have a bar intern. Suntory, by the way is not "by far the best of world's can't-call-it-Scotches". Japan's other single malt makers Nikka, Kirin and Chichibu would take issue with that. Nikka won the best single malt prize at the World Whisky Awards last year. Suntory won the best blended whisky. Scotland and US were left with the smaller prizes. Search for "Nonjatta" if you want to find out more about Japanese whisky.