The Scarlet Spectrum of Bitters

Amaro is an Italian category. Scarlet is what happens when somebody applies it to Japanese botanicals from a hundred-year-old house in Kanagawa, and it is the deepest single producer on our back bar.

We use the Bitter Liqueur in our Scarlet Negroni, with Malasanta Ensamble Mezcal and umeshu standing in for the gin and vermouth.

What Is a Bitter Liqueur or Amaro?

Amaro refers to a family of herbal liqueurs known for their bittersweet character. They are made by infusing herbs, roots, citrus peel, and spices into alcohol, then adding sugar and sometimes aging the mixture. Italy may have started the tradition, but Japan has given it a new life through ingredients like yuzu, sansho pepper, roasted tea, and shiso leaf.

The Scarlet Line

Scarlet is the creation of Tatsuya "Moto" Motonaga, who trained in Tokyo and Taipei before founding Iseya Distillery in 2021, a hundred-year-old house he renovated himself, a couple of kilometres from Lake Sagami. He toured roughly seventy European distilleries first, and now rents the neighboring farmland to grow many of his botanicals without pesticides. Everything is small batch, hand-blended and hand-bottled. Scarlet was the first Japanese amaro line to be commercially packaged and exported.

• Scarlet Bitter Liqueur (Scarlet Aperitivo): the original expression. A mix of over 25 botanicals including lemon balm, sage, licorice, cinnamon, jasmine, and blood orange peel. Perfect in Negronis and spritz-style drinks.
• Scarlet Orange: focused on citrus, especially blood orange. Bright, aromatic, and great for lighter cocktails.
• Scarlet Radice Amaro: earthy and root-driven with angelica, chicory, and black cumin. Smooth yet complex.
• Scarlet Verde Amaro: herbal and green with wormwood, sage, and marjoram. Clean, grassy, and refreshing.
• Scarlet Fernet Amaro: deep, bitter, and bold. Notes of chicory and aloe give it a traditional fernet structure.
• Scarlet Menta Amaro: mint-forward and cooling, ideal for after-dinner drinks or a twist on a Mojito.
• Scarlet Peach Amaro: three varieties of Yamanashi peach, hand-picked by a hundred volunteers and pressed, with the juice used to proof the spirit down in place of water. At 19% it is the lightest of the range.
• Scarlet Caffe Amaro: cold-brewed Ethiopian coffee from Bensa and Sidama alongside Panamanian Geisha, with hojicha, vanilla and cinnamon behind it. A digestif.
• Scarlet Fiori Amaro: over 34 botanicals, flower-led: peach blossom, jasmine, marigold, chamomile, mallow and mint flower. Made to mark Scarlet's hundredth batch and the distillery's fourth anniversary.
• Scarlet Cask Marriage Bitter Liqueur (Batch 8 and Batch 9): the Aperitivo, but rested two years in oak that previously held whisky from Chichibu, Kanosuke and Asaka, then blended across four barrels. Extremely limited, and released as numbered batches rather than a fixed recipe, so no two are quite the same.

The Scarlet Negroni at Izakaya Juraku

Our Scarlet Negroni is built with Scarlet Bitter Liqueur, Malasanta Ensamble Mezcal, and umeshu instead of the usual gin and vermouth. The mezcal brings smoke, the umeshu adds delicate sweetness, and the Scarlet binds it all with a bright, herbal bitterness. It pairs beautifully with dishes like Brown Butter Ramen, Kakuni, Oden, or Nikujaga.

Mezcal brings the smoke, umeshu brings a soft sweetness a vermouth would not, and the Scarlet holds the two apart with something bright and herbal. It goes well with the heavier end of the menu, Brown Butter Ramen, kakuni, oden, nikujaga.

What Bitterness Is Actually For

Bitterness is structure. A drink with sugar and acid and nothing else is a flavour with no floor under it, and it gets tiring by the third sip because there is nothing to push against.

Japanese cooking has a word adjacent to this, shibumi, which describes an astringent, restrained quality that stays with you instead of announcing itself. It is not a marketing idea. It is a flavour Japanese palates are trained on, from green tea to persimmon, and it is why a Japanese amaro is not a novelty. The category was always going to land here.

Visit Izakaya Juraku

Come by the bar to try our Scarlet Negroni. The Aperitivo is the only one on the cocktail menu right now, and that is the drink it goes into, the rest of the range we pour on its own. They have all had a turn in something behind the bar at one point or another, so ask whoever is working what they are doing with them.