The Japanese Shiso Bitter (200 ml)

The Japanese Bitters was founded in Kyoto with a single premise: that Japan's indigenous botanicals deserve the same formulation rigor applied to European amaro traditions. Shiso — the aromatic herb central to Japanese cuisine — is the sole hero botanical here, macerated rather than distilled to preserve the leaf's volatile, camphor-adjacent oils alongside its bright herbaceous character.

Kyoto's culinary culture, where shiso appears in everything from tsukemono to tempura, informs the sourcing philosophy: fresh purple shiso leaf is selected for its anthocyanin depth and anise-like top notes, qualities that distinguish it from the greener, more neutral green variety. The base is a neutral grain spirit, chosen to let the botanical speak without competition. Maceration extracts both the aromatic top register and the slightly bitter, tannic mid-palate characteristic of the leaf's cellular structure. At 200 ml and cocktail-bitters concentration, a few dashes deliver pronounced shiso character — a format unusual in the global bitters market, where shiso as a lead botanical remains almost entirely absent outside Japan.