Nikka Days

Days is the gentlest thing Nikka make, and it was designed that way. Released in 2018, it blends malt from both of the company's distilleries — Yoichi on Hokkaido and Miyagikyo in the hills near Sendai — with grain whisky from Nikka's Coffey stills, and the assembly is deliberately light-handed.

Yoichi is the coal-fired, coastal, faintly peaty one. Miyagikyo is softer and more floral. In most Nikka blends Yoichi does the shouting; here it has been dialled back to a whisper of smoke, with Miyagikyo's fruit and the Coffey grain's sweetness carrying the bottle instead.

It noses of lemon and orange blossom, pear, a little vanilla toffee. The palate is soft and sweet — citrus first, then toffee and a light cinnamon warmth — with the smoke appearing only at the very end, and briefly. Bottled at 40%, it is clean and short rather than complex, and it makes no pretence otherwise.

Buy it for the highball, and for the people in your life who insist they don't like whisky. It tends to change their minds.

How to Serve

Cold highball: three parts soda to one of whisky, plenty of ice, a lemon twist. Neat, it shows better lightly chilled than at room temperature — warmth exposes how light it is.

Where to Drink It

Bar Lotus, which suits a whisky this easy-going. Black Rock in Shoreditch for a highball at the end of a week. Scarfes Bar at the Rosewood if you want somewhere comfortable to sit for a while.

Food Pairings

Hot-smoked salmon, flaked over something plain — the trace of peat picks up the smoke without fighting it. Grilled prawns with a lot of lemon do the same job on a warmer evening.