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In the historic Japanese city of Kanazawa, craftsmen carefully shape and carve enormous blocks of ice destined to chill Negronis in some of the world’s most fashionable bars, AFP reports.

These specialists work for Kuramoto Ice, a century-old company based in Ishikawa Prefecture on the coast of the Sea of Japan. It is one of dozens of Japanese businesses producing premium ice of exceptional clarity.

Today, this seemingly ordinary product has become a genuine luxury accessory for cocktails. The ice is believed to melt more slowly than regular ice, making it increasingly popular in Japan’s cocktail culture. But the craze for expensive ice has already spread far beyond the country: bars in the United States, Australia and elsewhere are willing to pay up to 200 yen — around $1.30 — for a single cube.

Kuramoto Ice is one of the few Japanese companies exporting this type of ice overseas. Since it began international shipments in 2019, its overall sales have more than doubled.

“We don’t rush anything. We freeze the water slowly while constantly keeping it moving. That’s how you make good ice,” the company’s fifth-generation head told AFP at the Kanazawa factory.

“My heart literally skips a beat with joy when I see ice that looks like a precious gemstone,” the 41-year-old entrepreneur said as he poured chilled hojicha tea into a glass containing a perfectly clear sphere of ice.

The technology, originally developed in the United States, has been transformed into something approaching an art form in Japan. Specialized producers freeze water for 48 to 72 hours — far longer than the roughly 30 minutes needed to make ordinary ice at home or in commercial ice machines.

As water begins to freeze, crystallization progresses from the outer walls toward the center. Various impurities are gradually pushed inward. The Japanese method involves removing this concentrated, impure water and replacing it with fresh water.

Constant agitation also helps eliminate air bubbles. The result is almost perfectly transparent ice, known in Japan as junpyo.

Although there is little conclusive scientific evidence to support the claim, the technique is believed to produce colder, denser ice that chills a cocktail without diluting it with excess water.

Japan’s Crystal-Clear Ice Goes Global

The popularity of Japanese ice is rapidly growing overseas.

Take Native, the fashionable Singapore bar that made this year’s list of Asia’s 50 Best Bars. It imports around 900 kilograms of Kuramoto ice every year.

“Local ice is cheaper, but Kuramoto Ice is clearer, denser and melts more slowly,” co-owner Yong Wei said.

Back in Kanazawa, workers in protective clothing manually move enormous blocks of ice around the factory before beginning the painstaking work of carving them into perfectly even spheres, cubes and rectangular blocks with beveled edges.

The ice can even be made to precisely fit the dimensions of a particular glass at a customer’s request.

Finished pieces are packaged and stored in a dedicated room kept at –10°C before being shipped to customers around the world.

Kuramoto acknowledges the environmental cost of transporting ice thousands of miles, but believes that the relatively small volume of the product means its overall environmental impact is comparatively limited.

His dream of entering the US market dates back more than a decade, when he visited Las Vegas and noticed an apparent paradox: expensive cocktails were being served with poor-quality ice that melted quickly and diluted the drinks.

Meanwhile, the labor-intensive ice-making technique that is still widely used in Japan to produce a higher-quality product has all but disappeared in the United States.

At a Hilton hotel near Tokyo, bartender Shingo Miyachi prepares a Negroni using one of Kuramoto Ice’s large, crystal-clear cubes.

The cube fits the glass perfectly and, thanks to its remarkable transparency, becomes almost invisible.

“Ice really has an enormous impact on the taste of a cocktail,” Miyachi explains.

According to him, the difference becomes particularly noticeable in the drink’s aftertaste as the ice begins to melt.

Working with ice is considered one of the most important skills for Japanese bartenders. Many begin their training by learning how to break and shape ice with precision and care.

“When you look at the ice and see how much attention has gone into every detail, you can almost immediately tell how seriously the bartender takes the taste of the cocktail and how much care they have put into it,” Miyachi says. “A cocktail is truly born only when the glass, the ice and the liquid become one.”

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