Whiskey Highball

Whiskey and sparkling water — the format that built Scotch's global image and whose 2008 Suntory revival reversed Japan's decade of declining domestic whisky sales.

The Whiskey Highball is the foundational long-drink format for whiskey — spirit and carbonated mixer over ice in a tall glass — whose global commercial significance in the mid-20th century shaped the business models of Scotch whisky producers, American distillers, and soda water and ginger ale manufacturers simultaneously. The highball format became commercially standardized in American bars around the 1890s alongside the development of reliable commercial carbonated water bottling, and it was central to Scotch whisky's American market development through the early-to-mid 20th century. Scotch-and-soda became a symbol of sophisticated middle-class leisure across the British Empire and American social settings from approximately 1900 through 1960. Japan's specific relationship with the whisky highball produced the most refined cultural expression of the format: the Japanese highball izakaya culture that developed through the second half of the 20th century and was commercially revived by Suntory's 2008 Tory's Highball campaign, which reversed a decade of declining domestic whisky sales and demonstrated the format's capacity to expand a spirit category's consumer base.