Nagomi Whisky Cocktail Recipe: Pineapple & Star Anise

Build it in full: 45ml Nagomi whisky, 15ml Nagomi infused with fennel seed and star anise, 60ml pineapple juice, 10ml fresh lime juice, two whole star anise (one muddled, one for garnish) and 3–4 chunks of fresh pineapple. Muddle the anise alone, add the pineapple, pour the liquids, shake hard with ice for 12–15 seconds, then double strain over one large cube in a rocks glass. That is the entire nagomi whisky cocktail recipe. Everything below explains the infusion, the technique and the bottle itself.

This is our own build, written in millilitres for an Indian home bar. Every bottle figure carries an as-of date.

Yield: 1 serving. Prep: 5 minutes, plus infusion time if you are making the 15ml component yourself. Glassware: rocks or old fashioned glass, one large clear cube.

Ingredients and exact measures

45ml Nagomi whisky, straight from the bottle. This is the backbone pour and it is deliberately the larger of the two whisky components.

15ml Nagomi whisky infused with fennel seed and star anise. Method in the next section. It is a flavouring agent, not a second spirit.

60ml pineapple juice. Fresh-pressed juice from a ripe fruit and packaged juice are not interchangeable. Packaged juice is standardised and often carries added sugar or is reconstituted from concentrate, so it lands sweeter and flatter in acid than fruit you press yourself. If you are using a sweetened carton, drop to 45ml. That is the drier build, and it also leaves more room for the whisky to read through.

10ml fresh lime juice. Squeezed, not bottled. Bottled lime cordial carries added sugar and a preservative-stabilised acid profile, which changes the sugar-to-acid ratio the drink is balanced around.

2 whole star anise (Illicium verum). Muddle one into the base. Float the other as garnish.

3–4 chunks of fresh pineapple for muddling.

Ice. Cubes for the shaker, one large cube for the glass. The two do different jobs: shaking ice has high surface area and is meant to melt, chilling and diluting fast; the serving cube is meant not to melt, holding temperature with minimal further dilution.

Optional dry garnish: a light dusting of ground spice across the surface, so aroma sits above the liquid rather than dissolving into it.

Ingredient	ml	Peg equivalent	Substitution
Nagomi whisky	45ml	1.5 × 30ml small peg	None needed
Infused Nagomi	15ml	Half a small peg	15ml plain + 1 extra muddled pod
Pineapple juice	60ml	2 × 30ml pours (1 large peg)	45ml if sweetened/packaged
Fresh lime juice	10ml	⅓ of a small peg	Fresh lemon, same volume

How to make the fennel and star anise Nagomi infusion at home

Jar ratio: 200ml Nagomi : 2 whole star anise : 1 teaspoon lightly crushed fennel seed (Foeniculum vulgare). Scale linearly. 400ml takes four pods and two teaspoons.

Crush the fennel lightly, just enough to fracture the seed coat. A brief dry toast in a pan works too. Both do the same thing: expose surface area. The dominant aromatic compound in both spices is anethole, which is alcohol-soluble and extracts quickly at 40%-plus ABV. Fast extraction is the whole point, and it is also the risk. Over-steeping is the main failure mode, not under-steeping.

Work by the clock, not by opinion:

Checkpoint	What to do
2 hours	First check. Colour will have shifted slightly.
4 hours	Second check. Many batches are usable here.
8 hours	Third check. Decide whether to pull the pods and leave the fennel.
24 hours	Outer limit for a batch at this ratio. Strain regardless.

Most spice infusions at this strength and ratio finish well inside 24 hours. Strain through fine mesh first, then through a paper coffee filter to catch seed dust. Bottle into a sterilised, sealed container and store away from light.

Infused spirit at around 40% ABV keeps for months sealed and dark-stored. What fades first is the volatile top end of the aroma, not the safety of the liquid. Date the label. Never add fresh fruit or juice to a bottle you intend to store.

Skipping the infusion? Use 60ml plain Nagomi and muddle one extra star anise. The drink carries less aroma, and the reason is mechanical: muddling gives you a contact window of seconds through a shake, while steeping gives anethole hours to move into solution.

One legal point. Flavouring a purchased, duty-paid bottle in your kitchen is infusion. Distilling is a different activity entirely and requires a licence in India. Do not confuse the two.

How to build the nagomi whisky cocktail recipe step by step

1. Muddle the star anise alone. One pod, in the base of the shaking tin, pressed until the arms fracture. Doing it before the fruit goes in means the muddler works against a hard surface rather than wet pulp.
2. Add the pineapple chunks and muddle again, gently. You want the fruit pressed and its juice released. Pulverised fibre makes the drink cloudy and hard to strain.
3. Pour the liquids. 45ml Nagomi, 15ml infused Nagomi, 60ml pineapple juice, 10ml lime.
4. Fill with ice and shake. A Boston shaker is two pieces: a large tin plus a smaller tin or a mixing glass. Seat the smaller piece into the larger at a slight angle and strike the top firmly to seal. Shake hard for 12–15 seconds. Break the seal by holding the seam and tapping the heel of your hand against the wider tin’s shoulder.
5. Double strain. A Hawthorne strainer sits on the tin and holds back ice and large solids. A fine mesh strainer held under the pour catches ice shards, seed fragments and pineapple fibre.
6. Pour over one large cube. Garnish with a pineapple wedge and the second whole star anise.

Shaking does three measurable things at once. It drops the liquid close to freezing, adds roughly 20–25% dilution by volume as ice melts into the drink, a figure documented in Dave Arnold’s Liquid Intelligence (W. W. Norton, 2014), and aerates the pineapple juice into a light foam cap. Skip the shake and you get a drink that is warmer, stronger and less integrated than the recipe assumes.

Four errors account for most failed builds: a room-temperature glass, small or wet ice in the shaker, over-muddling the anise into bitter extraction, and skipping the second strainer.

Why a scotch-leaning blend holds up against pineapple

Blend composition, not branding, decides whether a whisky survives a tropical mixer. A blended whisky is malt whisky plus grain whisky. The malt fraction and its cask time supply oak-derived and fermentation-derived aromatic compounds; the grain fraction, especially when it is close to neutral, supplies alcohol and comparatively little aroma. A blend weighted toward malt and toward active cask influence has more to push through a sweet, acidic mixer. A light, grain-heavy blend has less, and pineapple will simply cover it.

Pineapple juice is a demanding mixer for a reason you can look up. It carries a high free-sugar load alongside both citric and malic acid, per USDA FoodData Central composition data. That combination hits sweetness and sourness at once, which is why an under-flavoured spirit disappears into it while a heavier one reads as a distinct layer.

The spice pairing is chemistry, not taste preference. Anethole is the principal constituent of the essential oil of both star anise and fennel seed, as the PubChem compound record sets out. Two ingredients dominated by the same compound stack rather than compete, so the infusion reinforces the muddled pod instead of introducing a second, conflicting aroma.

The 10ml of lime exists to work against pineapple’s sugar. At 60ml juice to 10ml lime you are running roughly 6:1. Sweeter packaged juice needs that ratio tightened. Go to 12ml lime, or cut the juice to 45ml. Never both at once.

The transferable method: before you mix any whisky into a tropical build, read the producer’s own published tasting notes and any cask or blend disclosure they make. Where a distiller names cask types, or states malt content, or publishes official notes describing oak, spice or dried-fruit character, you have evidence that the spirit contributes aroma of its own. Where the producer publishes nothing, the label ABV and category descriptor are all you have to go on. Apply that test to Nagomi exactly as you would to Suntory Toki or Hibiki.

What Nagomi whisky is, and what it costs in India

Nagomi sits in the same India-market portfolio as Oaksmith, produced under Beam Suntory India, now trading as Suntory Global Spirits. Nagomi is a Japanese noun for calm or harmony, which is where the bottle’s Japanese presentation comes from.

That name creates the single most common confusion around this brand, so treat it carefully. Since 1 April 2021, the Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association labelling standards have restricted the term “Japanese whisky” to liquid that is mashed, fermented, distilled, aged and bottled in Japan, with malted grain and Japanese water, aged at least three years in wood. Japanese-inspired branding, imported malt blended in India, and whisky actually distilled in Japan are three different things, and only the third qualifies under those standards. Read the back label and the producer’s own product page for the origin statement. Do not infer origin from a Japanese brand name. The standards exist precisely because that inference was being made.

ABV and bottle sizes are printed on the label and vary by market pack. Check the bottle in front of you and cross-check against your state’s excise price list, which itself records the approved pack sizes for sale in that state.

Price is where a written figure ages fastest. India has no national MRP for spirits. Karnataka Excise, Maharashtra State Excise, Delhi Excise and Goa each set their own duty structure, so the identical 750ml bottle can differ by several hundred rupees between two neighbouring states. In Karnataka, retail happens through the Karnataka State Beverages Corporation, which publishes its own rate list; Delhi and Maharashtra publish theirs through their excise departments. Those lists carry a notification date, and revisions land without notice. Find your state’s current list before you go. It is also the proof of whether the brand is listed for sale in that state at all. Labels sold in India carry Food Safety and Standards Authority of India mandated declarations, which is another place to read the pack details from the bottle itself.

Bottle, pack and pricing details above should be read from the current label and the current state excise list. Last verified against publicly available sources: 24 August 2026. Re-check quarterly.

Internal reading: Nagomi price state-wise, Indian peg sizes explained, Japanese whisky in India, Oaksmith range explained, Whisky highball ratios explained.

Three simpler Nagomi cocktails if you skip the infusion

The nagomi whisky cocktail recipe above is the highest-effort build on this page. These three are not.

Highball. 45ml whisky to 135ml chilled soda, a 1:3 ratio. Fill a tall glass with ice to the rim, pour the whisky, top with soda poured down the side of the glass, then stir once from the bottom. Ice to the rim is not a garnish decision; a full glass melts slower than a half-full one.

Whisky sour. 60ml whisky, 30ml fresh lime or lemon, 15–20ml sugar syrup, optional egg white or aquafaba. Dry shake without ice first to build the foam, then shake again with ice.

Pineapple highball. 45ml whisky, 60ml pineapple juice, topped with soda over ice. The two-minute version of the hero build.

Build	Spirit	Mixer	Ratio	Effort	Glass
Hero recipe	60ml (45 + 15 infused)	Pineapple + lime	60:60:10	Highest	Rocks, large cube
Highball	45ml	Soda	1:3	Lowest	Tall/Collins
Whisky sour	60ml	Citrus + syrup	4:2:1	Medium	Coupe or rocks
Pineapple highball	45ml	Pineapple + soda	3:4 + top	Low	Tall/Collins

To rebuild any of these at a different pour, hold the ratio and change the base. A 30ml highball takes 90ml soda; a 60ml one takes 180ml.

The cheapest upgrade to all three costs nothing: chill the glass first, and use bigger, harder ice. Small ice from a flexible tray carries trapped air and melts fast, which waters the drink before you finish it.

Buying, serving and responsible pouring notes for India

Count what is in the glass. This build uses 60ml of spirit, which is double a 30ml small peg and equal to one large peg. At a label strength around 40%, 60ml is roughly 24ml of pure alcohol; run the same multiplication using your bottle’s actual printed ABV. Two of these cocktails is four small pegs.

Legal drinking age is set by state, not nationally. It is 21 in most states, 25 in a few, and Gujarat, Bihar, Mizoram, Nagaland and Lakshadweep operate prohibition of varying scope. Your state excise department’s rules are the authority; nothing else is. Delhi Excise and Maharashtra State Excise both publish theirs.

Do not drive after drinking. Section 185 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 sets the limit at 30mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, which is 0.03% by volume.

Scaling for a party: multiply every liquid except the ice and garnish, but pre-batch the whisky, infusion and pineapple only. Add the lime within the hour before serving, because fresh citrus loses its aromatic character quickly once diluted and left standing. Muddle per glass, or muddle a batch of pineapple and anise separately and strain it into the pre-batch.

If you build only one thing from this page, build the infusion. The 15ml it contributes is what separates this nagomi whisky cocktail recipe from a pineapple highball, and a single 200ml jar makes thirteen drinks.

Nagomi whisky cocktail recipe questions people ask

Is Nagomi a Japanese whisky? Read the back label. Since 1 April 2021, the Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association standards reserve that term for whisky mashed, fermented, distilled, aged three years and bottled in Japan. A Japanese brand name on an India-market bottle proves nothing about origin.

What does Nagomi whisky cost in India? There is no national MRP. The same 750ml bottle carries a different retail price in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi and Goa, because each state sets its own duty. Pull your state’s current excise rate list, note its notification date, and treat any figure older than a quarter as stale. Our Nagomi price state-wise page tracks the same lists.

Can I make the nagomi whisky cocktail recipe without the infusion? Yes. Use 60ml plain Nagomi and muddle a second star anise pod into the base. The aroma is thinner, because a shake gives you seconds of contact where a steep gives anethole hours.

How long does the fennel and star anise infusion keep? Months, if it is strained clean, bottled sealed at around 40% ABV and stored away from light. Date the label. The aroma fades before anything else does. Never store it with fruit or juice in the bottle.

How much alcohol is in one glass? 60ml of spirit at roughly 40% ABV is about 24ml of pure alcohol, equal to one large peg or two small ones. Section 185 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 caps drivers at 30mg per 100ml of blood.

Which ice should I use? One large clear cube in the glass, ordinary cubes in the shaker. The shaker ice is meant to melt into the drink at 20–25% dilution; the serving cube is meant to hold temperature and add almost nothing more. See Indian peg sizes explained for the pour maths behind both.