Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week’s Cocktail, Matcha Sake Tonic!

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. Everybody take a breather? Feeling a bit calmer? Good. We now return to your regular schedule of light, summery, low ABV drinks. I was drinking some extremely strong gin and tonics last weekend when the inspiration for an Asian-style sipper hit. Relax and enjoy this Matcha Sake Tonic. Here’s the recipe:

2 oz nigori cloudy sake

1 oz roku gin

¼ t matcha powder

½ oz lime juice

Fevertree Indian Tonic Water

Shake the sake, gin, matcha, and lime juice in a shaker. Pour into a highball glass over ice. Top with tonic water and garnish with a lime wheel. 

As I alluded to earlier, this drink was born out of a session with several strong gin and tonics last weekend. In my opinion, a solid gin and tonic is 50/50 gin and quality tonic water and at least two lime wedges. The weekend’s G&Ts were not 50/50, because the daily news wasn’t pleasant. But in my defense, I had also discovered a really amazing gin that was worth the indulgence. 

Roku gin is made by Suntory, an Asian liquor powerhouse that also distributes an amazing Japanese whiskey here in the States. When you look at this absolutely gorgeous bottle, you find infusions that are utterly foreign, but equally delicious, to a western palate — sakura flower, yuzu peel, sansho pepper. If you are in the “I got sick on gin when I was in college and it makes me nauseous” camp, try this gin. It tastes absolutely nothing like the Gordon’s Gin you guzzled decades ago, I promise. 

As I settled in and enjoyed this Asian-flavored gin and tonic, I thought it would be clever to add some other Japanese flavors to make a full cocktail. One of the joys of a gin and tonic is that it will play nicely with any fruit or spice flavor. I’ve made G&Ts with basil and mead for parties. It’s easy to slide some blackberry syrup or house grenadine into a gin and tonic and create a brand-new weekend special for the bar. I’m not above pulling the same sort of trick for my Wonkette audience, but I’ve talked at length about the gin and tonic before, and I respect you all too much to simply dump a fruit syrup into gin and tonic and pretend it’s something new. 

I had considered a green tea syrup, but green tea by itself isn’t attractive, and the danger of over-brewing the tea while melting sugar into the syrup didn’t seem worth it. Matcha powder worked much better. The gin was still a bit too harsh in the drink, however. Adding nigori sake really drove the Asian flavors home, while giving the subtle notes in the gin room to play and letting the matcha provide a strong green tea finish to the cocktail. I’m rather pleased that this drink is so vibrantly colored; usually a bright green cocktail relies on Midori for its color. Midori is fine, but it is extremely sweet, and I always favor a dry, complex cocktail over a sugar bomb. 

Let’s talk ingredients:

Nigori Cloudy Sake: I have a soft spot for sake when making low ABV cocktails. It’s slightly more alcoholic than wine, and the flavor profile is so distinct that it suggests a range of flavors I don’t normally play with. Nigori is the best when it comes to cocktails. The creamy color is perfect for making a distinctive drink, and the sake notes are strong enough to carry through when combined with other ingredients. If there was a sake that I’d keep behind the bar to surprise a customer, this would be it. 

Roku Gin: One of the things worth keeping in mind when shopping for gin in 2024 is that any distillery that makes whiskey or bourbon also has a gin and vodka available. Vodka is an unaged spirit that’s easy to crank out when you’re waiting 5 years for your whiskey to be ready for market, and gin is vodka with an herbal infusion. This wonderful gin is what happens when quality distillers get creative with their “filler” product. Check with your local microdistillery and see what they’re throwing together while waiting for the bourbon to finish. 

If you are absolutely put off by the very idea of gin, you can make this cocktail with 3 oz of sake and omit the hard stuff. I won’t judge you. But please, do try some of the nicer gins out there. You will be pleased and surprised.  

Matcha Powder: I had to get creative when sourcing this ingredient in suburban Ohio. None of the grocery stores carry it, but Starbucks has it behind the bar for matcha green tea lattes. Ask nicely, throw them a few bucks, and they’ll provide a big cup of the stuff for you. I’m sure it’s full of green food coloring, and I’m told there’s much better matcha out there. But if you’re in the hinterlands, this is a nice hack for getting the good stuff. 

Lime juice: Acid to balance out the sugar from the matcha and tonic. Use fresh, always. 

Fevertree Tonic Water: Please use the good stuff here. Don’t use Schweppes. Once you splurge and try a subtle, dry tonic water like Fevertree, gin and tonics start to make sense as a cocktail for grownups. You won’t regret the indulgence. 

In summary and conclusion, drink well, drink often, and tip your bartender — donate to Wonkette at the link below!  

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