Highball with Chivas Mizunara.
The pour that stays out of the food\'s way.

"What would you like to start with?" we ask, and one of the answers we hear most often at Bello Vero, our small Italian restaurant in Kitashirakawa, Kyoto, is simply, "A highball to begin with."

Our highball is built on a specific bottle. Chivas Regal Mizunara 12 Year — a Scottish blended Scotch finished in casks of Japanese Mizunara (water oak). A slightly unusual one to keep on the back bar.

A proper bottle behind a casual order

The izakaya highball, made with a cheaper whisky and drunk easily, is its own wonderful culture. But when the glass has to sit next to a long Italian dinner, the brief changes a little. Antipasti, pasta, a main, a dolce — across an evening where the food keeps changing its expression, you want a drink that holds the same calm face all the way through.

That is exactly why we pour Chivas Mizunara. The smoothness of a good blended Scotch, plus the very particular finish that Mizunara oak leaves behind. It doesn\'t shout, and yet every sip is properly delicious. For a glass ordered with the words "to begin with," we wanted to quietly put in a little more care than most.

Mizunara oak, a small Japanese mystery

Mizunara is a species of oak that grows in the mountains of Japan. The story goes that around the Second World War, when Scotch was no longer reaching the country, Japanese whisky makers tried their hand with domestic oak — and Mizunara was the result. As a cask wood it splits and leaks easily, and for a long time distilleries in Scotland kept it at arm\'s length.

And yet the whisky that comes out of a Mizunara cask carries something else entirely: an incense-like aroma, deep and clear, reminiscent of sandalwood and aloeswood. The world whisky industry came around — "you can\'t get this from any other oak" — and today Mizunara is one of the symbolic tools of Japanese whisky.

Chivas Regal Mizunara 12 Year is the bottle that arrived from the Scotland side of that conversation. A Scotch that came knocking to borrow the strength of a Japanese cask — that\'s an overstatement, but looking at the bluish washi-like band wrapped around the bottle and the bellflower-shaped crest on the label, you do feel that it really is a whisky in that spirit.

Loosened with soda, set down beside the food

We build it into a highball. One large, hard-edged ice cube in a rocks glass. Pour the Chivas Mizunara, give it a single quiet stir, and top with well-chilled soda. Fine bubbles climb the glass, and inside the pale gold the Mizunara aroma opens softly — that is the glass we carry over to you.

Not too strong, not too thin. The strength we aim for is just enough that the incense-like scent you\'d smell on the neat pour still walks up to your nose over the bubbles. The first sip is bright and clean, and after you swallow, a quiet woody finish drifts back through — that balance, we think, is the most comfortable place for a drink to sit alongside a long meal.

"Staying out of the way" is a luxury, quietly

Wine and sake combine with food and change the food\'s expression. The highball is a little different — it keeps the dish in the leading role and does its own quiet work alongside it.

A mouth full of a rich bite is rinsed away by the soda. The fat gets cut. The palate is reset, and you can come back to the next bite with a fresh feeling. "Not getting in the way" sounds modest, but it\'s actually quite a luxurious job.

And when that glass also brings the scent of Mizunara along with it, something slips into the room — a Western kitchen, with a faint sense of being inside a Japanese wooden house. Bello Vero\'s interior is a kyo-machiya shell with old beams and earthen walls left in place, and we rather like how that mixture lands.

What it loves on the plate

The highball can sit next to almost anything, but the dishes that most often make a guest think, "Glad I went with the highball tonight," tend to look like this.

• Jamón Serrano — the soda and the Mizunara lightly carry away the salt and fat of the aged ham
• Fried potatoes with anchovy and garlic butter — fried + garlic butter is where the highball\'s "reset" is most useful
• Vegetable fritto, six seasonal vegetables — cutting the oil of a thin batter is the highball\'s natural role
• A5 Japanese Black Wagyu steak (Ginkakuji Ohnishi) — after a heavy bite of beef, the soda and Mizunara open the palate again
• Lampredotto — beef tripe braised in white wine. The incense-like finish stays with the long aftertaste of the braise

From antipasti through pasta to the main, whether you stay on the same glass or move to a second one, the highball doesn\'t interrupt the flow of the meal. That, more or less, is everything we ask of it.

A glass to settle into, on a Kitashirakawa evening

After a walk through Ginkaku-ji and the Philosopher\'s Path, head a little south along Shirakawa-dori and you\'ll find us. Two minutes on foot from the city bus stop "Kitashirakawa," about fifteen minutes from Ginkaku-ji. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 1pm straight through to 10pm — drop in for a single highball at the counter while it\'s still light out, if you like.

The evenings we love most are the ones that begin with someone saying, "A highball to start." Stay as long as you like.