Daughter’s gift leads to crossover sweets.

Japan is pretty flexible when it comes to sandwich fillings. Sure, you’ll find plenty of examples of old standbys like ham-and-cheese or tuna with mayo, but also dessert sandwiches with sliced fruit, whipped cream, and/or chocolate.

So if anything goes for Japanese sandwiches, why not pour some Japanese whisky in there too? That’s the latest plan from Fuji Baking, which has created the Whisky Bonbon Snack Sandwich together with partner Nagahama Distillery.

▼ Nagahama Distillery introduction video

“Snack Sandwich” is Fuji Baking’s line of pocket sandwiches, of the sort that became a hit with foreign visitors to Japan during the Tokyo Olympics. Snack Sandwiches first went on sale in 1975 and come in all sorts of different varieties, but how did they decide to make one with whisky? It all started when Hirofumi Yamashita, the manager of Fuji Baking’s Nishiharu factory in Aichi Prefecture, received a bottle of whisky from his daughter as a present. Deeply impressed with its quality and flavor, he wondered if there was some way Fuji Baking could do a joint project with the whisky’s maker, which turned out to be Nagahama, based two prefectures over in Shiga.

▼ That’s Yamashita on the right. The moral of the story is that when raising children, you should teach them to, once they’re old enough to do so,  give you gifts of hard liquor.

After putting their heads together, Fuji Baking and Nagahama hit upon the idea of crafting a whisky bonbon-flavor Snack Sandwich, using Nagahama’s spirits, of course. What followed was an extensive and through testing phase in which the development team repeatedly experimented with different ratios of chocolate cream to whiskey until they found the optimal combination…or maybe they found the perfect ratio right away and simply held off on telling their bosses about it for a while, since it’s hard to imagine a more enjoyable work project to have running long than one that involves consuming chocolate and whisky. In any case, Whisky Bonbon Snack Sandwiches are on sale as of November 1 at supermarkets and drugstores in Japan’s central Chubu region.

Source, images: PR Times
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