Lemon flavor with kick

Honshibori Lemon

Brand: Kirin

Price: 167 yen

Place of purchase: Belx Supermarket

Rating:

Kirin Beverage has three of these fruit-juice flavored shochu highballs, or chuhais in attractively labeled 350 and 500 ml cans, including grapefruit and pink grapefruit. I like the tang of lemon, so chose this one. The can indicates that the chuhai has real fruit juice, no preservatives, and no added sweetener. Just the goodness of juice, shochu and soda. It tastes fresh, clean, and has marginally more kick than other similarly priced canned chuhais at 6% alcohol. I noticed that it feels "clean" since there's nothing extra in it.

A lot of canned chuhais, I find, taste a bit tinny due to the addition of artificial flavors and acidic adjuncts. This one is what you see is what you get - just lemon, shochu, and soda. I thought about the cost performance and convenience, too. I could just get a big jug of cheap shochu, some lemons, and soda. These days, shochu and soda water are cheap enough, but fruit and vegetable prices keep rising. I'm pretty sure I couldn't make this highball for the price point. And then there's the labor - squeezing those lemons.