The Highball: Why It's Having a Moment

The Highball is technically the simplest drink in the world: spirit, soda, ice. But Japanese drinking culture elevated it into an art form, and the rest of the world is finally paying attention. In Tokyo, the whisky highball is served with a precision that borders on ritual: Suntory Toki whisky, perfectly clear ice, cold soda water poured slowly down a bar spoon to preserve carbonation.

Order one in Tokyo by name. Kaku-hai is the Kakubin highball, and it arrives in a frosted mug at izakaya counters for a few hundred yen. It is a food drink first: karaage, yakitori in tare, anything fried and salty. The carbonation cuts fat the way a squeeze of lemon does, which is why it gets drunk through the meal rather than before it.

Suntory's campaign to revive Japanese whisky consumption through the highball format is one of the great marketing stories in spirits history. By the 2000s, whisky had fallen out of favor with younger Japanese drinkers. Suntory responded by positioning the highball as a food-friendly, accessible way to drink whisky, installing dedicated highball machines in izakayas across Japan. Sales exploded.

The appeal is obvious once you have a properly made one. A highball opens up a whisky's lighter notes, floral and citrus characteristics that get buried when you drink it neat. The carbonation lifts the spirit, making it refreshing enough for warm weather and light enough to pair with food. It is the anti-cocktail: no technique required, just good ingredients and proper execution.

Western bars have embraced the format with variations beyond whisky. Mezcal highballs, gin and tonic riffs, even rum and soda combinations are showing up on menus under the highball umbrella. The drink's flexibility means it works with almost any base spirit, and its low-ABV profile per serving fits the broader trend toward lighter drinking.

Spend less on the whisky, not more. Suntory Kakubin, the hatched yellow bottle Japanese bars pour by the thousand, costs around £30 and was built for this job. A heavily peated Islay or a sherried 18-year is wasted here: soda flattens the oak and the smoke turns medicinal. Past about £45 the bottle stops improving the drink.

For home use, invest in quality soda water. Fever-Tree or Topo Chico both have the aggressive carbonation that a highball demands. Use a tall, thin glass, plenty of ice, and a two-to-three ratio of soda to spirit. Stir gently once and stop. The highball is not about complexity. It is about doing something simple with total commitment.

Ice is the part most people get wrong. Freezer trays produce cloudy cubes full of trapped air that crack and dilute fast. Buy a bag of hard clear cubes, or freeze a lidded cool box of water overnight and saw the clear top into blocks. Chill the glass first, fill it to the rim with ice, stir it dry, tip out the meltwater, then build.

The other mistake is a two-litre bottle of soda. It goes flat after the second pour, and every highball that week is worse than the last. Buy the 150ml or 200ml bottles and open a fresh one each round. A £1 bottle of soda is doing as much work here as the whisky is.

https://www.suntory.com