by Vijaylakshmi
For Shingo Gokan this is his second visit to India in a year. Both were at the invitation of Beam Suntory, and Gokan used his visits to explore the local food culture and ingredients. While he is a great admirer of Indian curries and Indian spices, Gokan was fascinated with Indian unripe (green) mangoes during his last visit and intrigued about using it in his cocktails.
“It’s real fun creating cocktails with Indian spices. I have been making a lot of cocktails using Indian jaggery, long pepper, green and black cardamom, Indian cinnamon, curry leaves, etc.” Gokan said in an interaction with ETHospitalityWorld.
He makes sure he carries Japanese ingredients and blends it with local ingredients to make interesting cocktails when he visits places.
“I like to play with the Indian spices when I am in India,” he said.
Talking about India’s bar market, Gokan said that it is a very “young market” but at the same time an “important market” considering the “demographic advantage” and the great “food culture” of the country.
When asked about Japanese spirits and their versatility, Gokan said Japan is known for making the best of cars, watches, and other products. Similarly the country also produces great craft spirits. While Japanese whisky has carved its place in the premium alco-beverage space, Japanese white spirits like Haku, Roku, Sochu, etc, are not yet as popular.
“I make my own Sochu, but not many bartenders outside Japan know about it,” he said.
Gokan said that there are a lot of processes and passion attached to making these special drinks and it’s really next level. But nobody understands these drinks yet, he says.
As a celebrity bartender, who has set up a few cocktail bars of global acclaim and collaborated with entrepreneurs in countries like the US to set up cocktail bars, Gokan said that his future endeavour is to contribute to the promotion of Japanese craft spirits.
“I don’t aspire to set up hundreds of bars across the world. Now I focus my energy on contributing and doing something good for the society and the Japanese economy,” he said.
As part of this thought process, his SG Group is now getting into production of Sochu and Japanese liqueur.
“I want to help increase the consumption of Japanese craft spirits which can support the local farmers, local fishermen community, local food industry and eventually boost the Japanese economy,” he said.
Beam Suntory collaborated with the Gokan to promote Toki Suntory whisky who held master classes in Delhi and Bengaluru.
