Scotch Highball

A refreshing and elegant cocktail featuring Scotch whisky lengthened with sparkling soda water over ice.

The Scotch highball is one of the simplest and most enduring serves in the whisky canon, yet it carries an unusually rich cultural history that extends from late Victorian Britain through post-war Japan to the present day. The basic formula — Scotch whisky lengthened with soda water over ice in a tall glass — was fashionable in England by the 1880s, when fizzy soda water, first commercially produced by Jacob Schweppe in Geneva in 1783 and by his London operation from 1792, had become widely available. American adoption followed quickly, with the Scotch and soda gaining particular status as a sophisticated drink for gentlemen in the early 20th century. The drink's second life as a cultural institution took place in Japan. Suntory founder Shinjiro Torii opened Japan's first domestic whisky distillery at Yamazaki near Kyoto in 1923, and in the decades that followed, promoted the whisky highball as an affordable, accessible way for Japanese drinkers to engage with the spirit. The post-war Japanese economic recovery of the 1950s and 1960s made whisky highballs a staple of the izakaya (Japanese pub) and salaryman culture. Japanese bartenders elevated the preparation to near-ceremonial precision: chilling the glass, using large clear ice to minimize dilution, stirring the whisky against the ice before adding hyper-carbonated soda water down the inside of the glass, and giving only a single gentle lift with the bar spoon to preserve the bubbles. This shokunin kishitsu — craftsman spirit — transformed a two-ingredient drink into an art form.