Bar review - Single Malt Bar Moonshine, Tokyo

Facts

Name: Single Malt Bar Moonshine Address: ムーンシャイン, 2 Chome-15-17 Shinbashi, Minato, Tokyo 105-0004, Japan Website: n/a

Getting there

Single Malt Bar Moonshine is located just five minutes easy stroll from the Shinbashi subway station, and around 10 minutes from SHiodome subway station. If you are staying at the Park Hotel Tokyo and/or are visiting The Society whisky bar there, it is very easy to combine the two.

The bar is located up one floor from street level. The sign outside is quite easy to spot, as can be seen in the picture above.

The experience

The bar has been around for about 10 years, so these guys know what they are doing. The interior is rather dark, lots of wood, and tall shelves. They have a little over 300 bottles on the shelves in total. There are a lot of distillery bottlings to be found, but also quite a from Independent Bottlers like Blackadder and Signatory. Some of the scotch single malt are bottlings made exclusively for Japan (typically for shops like Shinanoya and Isetan).

We really liked the fact that they had a few Japanese whiskies on offer as well. Quite a few from the brand Ichiro's Malt, including a few Chichibu whiskies.

We were served some delicious snack foods to go with our whisky; really tasty pieces of sausage, smoked quail eggs and some sushi.

The service was impeccable, and the bartenders knew a fair bit of English. We got to spend some time chatting with the Bar Manager, Mitsuru Sano. A very approachable and nice gentleman. We felt very welcome in this bar, and actually went back for a second visit during our trip.

One of the bartenders demonstrated hand-cutting a perfect ball of ice for us. It took him less than two minutes to create the ball from a square block of ice. Impressive stuff!

Sláinte! - Thomas