On a quiet New Yr’s night time on the Ritz-Carlton in Tokyo, a visitor within the resort’s Hinokizaka restaurant set down his chopsticks and picked up his glass of celebratory rice brew. As an alternative of sipping it like everybody else, he carried it to the resort bar and issued a problem: “Flip this right into a cocktail.”

The drink was o-toso, made by steeping medicinal roots, barks and herbs in sake or its sweeter counterpart, mirin. There isn’t any mounted components, however widespread components embrace cinnamon bark, bellflower, citrus peels, rhubarb and sansho pepper, every with its personal health-giving properties. For generations in Japan, it has been the primary style of the brand new 12 months, served within the morning from pink lacquer cups handed from the youngest to the eldest at dwelling to represent the switch of youth and vitality. The identify interprets to “slaughter (evil) and revive.”

O-toso is a ceremonial drink, not often seen exterior its fleeting ritual setting. “However that is the Ritz-Carlton; I couldn’t say ‘no,’” says head bartender Kentaro Wada, who stirred the visitor’s brew with gin and vermouth to create a candy and soiled Japanese Martini—and the prototype for what grew to become the bar’s signature drink, the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo Martini. 

The cooks at Hinokizaka put together their o-toso with mirin, a candy brew now largely utilized in cooking that was traditionally loved as a beverage by Japan’s aristocracy.

Wada sought a mirin that stayed true to the drink’s historic roots. He discovered it within the Baba Honten brewery in Chiba prefecture, the heartland of mirin-making. The brewery has not modified the method for its Saijo Shiro Mirin because it debuted within the mid-Nineteenth century. 

As an alternative of steeping the o-toso combine in his mirin, Wada replicates its essence with bitters comprised of shiso and yuzu. 

Seven hundred miles south, in the meantime, within the subtropical metropolis of Miyazaki, Yui Ogata was dealing with a distinct problem. Getting ready for the 2022 Diageo World Class cocktail contest, she wanted a drink that will stand out and inform a Japanese story. However as time sped by and the strain mounted, Ogata was dropping sleep and commenced feeling unwell. 

“A bartender good friend really helpful I strive Chinese language medication,” she says. “So I went to a neighborhood retailer, and their prescription labored.”

That’s when the inspiration hit. Her prescribed elixir was rather a lot just like the one her grandparents ready every New Yr’s Day. In actual fact, historians hint o-toso again to a second-century CE doctor in China. Within the ninth century, the custom traveled to Japan, the place it discovered recognition with the nobles of the Heian court docket. 

Ogata determined to craft a cocktail that includes o-toso, however there was a hitch: She wanted the botanicals, and it was midsummer. Shops solely inventory sachets of o-toso combine within the lead-up to the brand new 12 months, and each store she tried turned her away.

“Lastly, my mother discovered one lone packet at a pharmacy,” she says. “So I solely had one likelihood; I couldn’t afford to make a mistake.” 

Ogata infused a Chardonnay verjus with the combination, yielding “a scrumptious Japanese-style vermouth with the aroma of the natural medicines contained in o-toso.” She paired her infused verjus with Tanqueray No. Ten gin, gyokuro inexperienced tea and the peels of grapefruit and lime. She referred to as it Otoso Martini, and it carried her all the best way to the nationwide title. 

The drink is now the spotlight of the menu in Ogata’s bar, Tie & Unfastened, making Miyazaki probably the one place in Japan the place o-toso may be loved year-round. And for everybody else, the transient window to drink it’s nearly right here.