IMADA'S SUGIDAMA
Recipe:
In a mixing glass, combine:
• 1 ½ ounces Tanqueray No. 10 gin
• 1 ½ ounces Fukucho Moon on the Water junmai ginjo
• ¼ ounce toasted cedar simple syrup
• 1 drop clarified lemon juice
• 1 drop sesame oil with macerated citrus peels
Add ice and stir. Begin setting the cocktail glass by placing it on a saucer and surrounding the base with ice and ice shavings. Pour the mix into the glass and begin garnishing inside and around the drink with florals. Place the sugidama on top of the cocktail glass.
THE
CONTESTANT
Tracy Marshall
Hometown:
Springfield, Missouri
What is the name of your cocktail?
Imada’s Sugidama
What inspired this garnish?
A “sugidama,” or cedar ball, is the recognized symbol of the sake brewing process. At the beginning of the brewing season, most breweries hang a sugidama outside of their door full of green cedar leaves—as the sake matures, the cedar ball naturally begins to brown. Once the entire sugidama is dull, the sake-drinking season has begun. Utilizing this symbol as the garnish pays ode to the use of sake in this cocktail, which is married with one of our favorites, Tanqueray 10.
What’s the inspiration behind this cocktail?
Tanqueray 10, with its slightly sweet and warm qualities due to the addition of chamomile and fresh citrus notes, inspired me to take a feminine approach to this cocktail. I chose to combine it with a soft and fragrant junmai ginjo, Moon on the Water, from the Fukucho brewery in Hiroshima. Fukucho’s female owner, Miho Imada, is also the toji—a rarity in Japan to have both jobs done by the same person.