Darkness has settled into the alleys of Karatsu.
There are hardly any signs of people in the streets. Maybe because it is a weekday afternoon. Maybe because it is winter.
It is a city that feels truly quiet.
Even though this area is considered the downtown district,
it is not easy to simply walk around and find a place that catches your eye.
Before leaving the previous restaurant, I thought it would be better to search the next place in advance using Google Maps and Tabelog.
Of course,if I find an interesting place while walking, I should be able to change the plan.
The places I look up beforehand are just a kind of safety net.
This is a place I found on Google Maps.
It turns out that it is already quite famous in the neighborhood.
The sign reads Stand Bar Hennessy.
Stand bar?
I wondered if it meant something like a tachinomi (立ち飲み),
and opened the door.
The bar is quite small.
There are only counter seats with about seven or eight stools.
The back bar is lined with many different bottles.
Following recent trends, there are many malt whiskies, and I can also see Scotch whisky and bourbon. There are liqueurs for cocktails as well.
On one side of the bar, there were two small oak casks.
One said Macallan, and the other said Bowmore.
So I asked if there was actually whisky inside them.
He said that when he first bought them, they really did contain those whiskies.
But it was a very long time ago, and now they are simply decorations.
The most distinctive thing about this bar is the bartender.
A white-haired gentleman runs the place alone.
On the bartender certificate hanging on the wall, it says Showa(昭和) 48.
That means he obtained the certificate in 1973.
In other words, he has been a bartender for 53 years.
I became curious about the cocktails made by a white-haired bartender who had already been working before I was even born.
When I order a cocktail, I usually do not order by name. Or rather, I cannot.
I cannot possibly memorize the names of all those cocktails.
So instead, I explain my current mood or situation and ask the bartender to recommend something.
I told him that I was already full, so I would like a cocktail that could help settle my stomach. I also said that something sweet would be fine.
What he made was an Alexander.
It is a cocktail made with brandy, crème de cacao, and milk.
Since I said I was full, it felt like he made me a sweet dessert.
Next,
I asked for something with carbonation.
He made a Singapore Sling.
It is a gin-based cocktail mixed with cherry liqueur and soda water.
It was refreshing and easy to drink.
The cocktails at this bar are not really in the modern style.
These days in Japan, cocktails often aim for a taste that feels extremely precise and clean.
But the cocktails here are more rustic and warm, like cocktails from an earlier time.
The gentle personality of the owner bartender seems to appear in the cocktails as well.
Next to me, there was a renewable energy engineer who was the same age as me.
He was drinking cocktails alone. He said he had come here on a business trip from Sapporo. He comes here often, about one week every month.
So he became a regular at this bar.
The owner bartender, the engineer my age, and I
the three of us talked about many things, and time passed quickly.
For my last drink,
I ordered Mortlach 12.
It was a whisky I had never tried before. It is a whisky from the Speyside region.
To me, it felt like a classic single malt with very good balance. I could hardly feel any peat. But it was not the overly smooth style that is easy to drink without thinking.
It felt like a well-made whisky with a solid character of its own.
When I paid the bill and was about to leave,
the bartender gave me two large mandarins as a gift.
The taste of the mandarins was nothing particularly special.
But I could feel the bartender’s warm heart.
Those mandarins made me feel a little less lonely.
In Karatsu, this might be the most famous bar.
After all, he has been running it for 53 years.
It is a place with warmth built over time.
In a small provincial town like this, you should not expect cocktails like those in Ginza. Here, you should experience the cocktails of this place.
Stand Bar Hennessy.
A bar with a long history, an owner bartender with decades of experience, and a warm atmosphere.
By the way,
the term “stand bar” can probably be understood as a Western version of tachinomi (立ち飲み).
Tachinomi are still places where people literally drink while standing.
But a stand bar is better understood as a small bar where you sit at the counter.
In fact, the term was mainly used in the 1970s, and it is not commonly used these days.
So the name itself is another sign of how long this place has been around.
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