Scotch & Soda

The simplest and most elegant way to enjoy Scotch whisky. This refreshing highball lets quality whisky shine through while soda adds effervescence and easy drinkability.

The Scotch and Soda is among the simplest and most enduring of all whisky serves — a two-ingredient highball that became internationally standard in the decades following carbonated water's commercial availability. Soda water was first commercially bottled by Joseph Hawkins in the United States in 1809 and made widely available through the mid-19th century as carbonation technology developed, though the Scottish practice of taking whisky with water predates carbonated water by centuries. Patrick Gavin Duffy, who tended bar at the Ashland House hotel and later other establishments in New York, included an account of serving Scotch with soda water in his 1934 book The Official Mixer's Manual, and the combination's adoption by British officers and colonial administrators — for whom Scotch whisky and imported soda water became standard social accoutrements across the British Empire — cemented its global commercial spread. Japan's specific contribution to the Scotch and Soda tradition came through the whisky highball (haibooru) culture that Japanese bars developed from imported Scotch whisky and domestic whisky through the 20th century, particularly the Suntory highball revival campaign from 2008 onward that demonstrated the format's commercial resilience to a new generation.