Five bars across Japan mixing up shochu Negronis for Negroni Week 2024

Located a two-minute walk from Ikebukuro Station, Kokuteeru is part yakitori restaurant, part American prohibition-era cocktail bar. While chefs grill specially prepared chicken and seasonal vegetables over hand-selected binchotan charcoal, resident mixologists prepare everything from Japanese staples like umeboshi sours and lemon sours to Western classics like old fashioned and, of course, the Negroni.

For Negroni Week, the bar will be serving up their Wafers Negroni, a chocolate-inspired take on the classic. Complementing Campari and cacao-infused vermouth, the shochu base of the cocktail is Hachijojima’s Bakkan Nasakeshima, a barley shochu with a faint chocolate aroma. Drawing on a shochu tradition called maewari, the cocktail is pre-mixed in a ceramic container to create a softer, more mellow flavour profile.

Café and gelateria by day and cocktail bar by night, Tigrato has been attracting cocktail lovers to Rokubancho near Yotsuya Station for years. The venue offers a seasonally rotating roster of 15 homemade gelatos and a one-of-a-kind coffee-based cocktail menu in a warm, tastefully decorated and naturally lit environment. 

Tigrato will draw on Okinawan drinking culture this year, offering a Negroni variation with awamori and coffee as its base. Awamori is indigenous and unique to Okinawa and is said to be Japan’s oldest spirit. Made with long grain indica rice, it has an earthy and savoury flavour. Combining the bitterness of Campari, the fragrant tones of awamori and the richness of coffee, Tigrato’s offering this year is one to check out.

Folklore in Chiyoda’s Uchisaiwaicho has developed a name for itself in Tokyo’s mixology scene in only two short years. While its minimalist architecture honours Japanese tradition, the menu emphasises innovation, mixing regional sake and shochu with Western liquors. Sourcing its products from distilleries around the country and regularly inviting guest bartenders, the bar has earned a reputation for creating contemporary cocktails that spotlight the characteristics of their hand-selected domestic pours. 

Folklore will offer an elegantly simple Negroni this year that combines Campari and Aokage, a barley shochu from Miyazaki's Yanagita Distillery. Made using two-rowed barley from Kyushu and offered only twice yearly, Aokage’s flavour profile is described as a cross between warm toast and cotton candy – a decadent pairing with Campari's bitter orange flavour.

Heading southwest, another participant this year is Kobe’s Mimosa Pudica. After cutting his teeth at the award-winning D.Bespoke cocktail bar in Singapore, owner Sai Kousei returned to Kobe to open Mimosa Pudica in 2022. The bar offers modern and classic twist cocktails using local products from Hyogo prefecture and sake from Nada Gogo, a historic sake-brewing region of Kobe. 

Kousei’s Negroni offering will be his house signature, the MP Negroni. The cocktail offers an adventurous mix of rice shochu blended with Campari and Mizuho Kuromatsu Kenbishi, an aged sake from Kenbishi Sake Brewery in Nada Gogo. The drink is enhanced with a house-made sake vermouth infused with herbs and spices sourced from the surrounding area and garnished with a candied orange peel.

Named after the Japanese word for night jasmine, Kumamoto’s Yakoboku has been serving up locally inspired cocktails and sleek, minimalist vibes since early 2020. Set in a 150-year-old former ryokan (traditional inn), the bar has recently captured international attention, being named on the Asia’s Best Bars list in 2023 and 2024. Behind the bar is Kumamoto native Shinya Koba, who opened the venue after learning the ropes in sought-after establishments in Tokyo, Nara and Singapore. His menu features seasonal creations that make use of fresh local ingredients and Koba’s years of experience. 

Koba’s Kumamoto Negroni will feature Musha Gaeshi, a rice shochu native to Kumamoto, and toso, a spiced medicinal sake typically drunk in the area during New Year celebrations. The drink will also incorporate juice from local social welfare organisation Tensui and an orangette garnish made by a chocolatier from Kumamoto’s Cacao 326.

Head to the official website to learn more about Negroni Week and how to get involved.