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Liqueur (リキュール), is a generic term for sweet, easy-to-drink liquors made by adding flavor to spirits and then adding sugar, also known as liquor. For example, Cointreau, an orange peel liqueur that is a must in any bar in the world; Baileys, a sweet, creamy liqueur; and Nog, which is often found in frozen shots at parties, is also a liqueur. Similarly, the sweet and sour plum wine that follows is also a liqueur.
🤗 01 Origin of Plum Wine
Umeshu (うめしゅ), as the name suggests, is a sake made from plums. Plums from China were introduced to Japan 4,000 years ago in the Yayoi period, and like in China, plums were initially used in Chinese medicine, as ornamental herbs, and as seasonings to add flavor to food; in fact, salting plums has been a tradition in both China and Japan for thousands of years. At the end of the Han Dynasty and in the Three Kingdoms, it became popular to put a few seasonal plums in hot wine to add flavor and largely remove the cloudiness and bad taste caused by underdeveloped brewing techniques. This custom continued until the Southern Song Dynasty, and in the context of rapid economic development gave rise to plum products such as plum dew, plum drinks, summer plum liangqi, and many people mixed plum dew into wine to make cocktails to drink.
Then, later, plum wine appeared. Whether the birthplace of umeboshi was China or Japan cannot be verified due to the lack of detailed records. However, judging from the popularity of umeboshi nowadays, it may have been after distillers were widely used in the production of alcohol. It is presumed that both China and Japan had at least small-scale distilled spirits made for drinking purposes in the 14th century, but there are records of distilled spirits being made in China in the Yuan Dynasty's “Drinking and Meal Preparation” (1331), and in Japan, although there are no specific years, there are records of Awamori in the Ryukyus around the 1400's, which is also the origin of shochu in Japan. With a high number of distilled spirits, the manufacture of umeboshi was a natural progression.
World-famous Soya Plum Wine
However, the only written history of umeboshi (plum wine) and umeboshi making similar to that of modern times is the “Honchosai Gokan” from the Edo period (1697) in Japan, but since sugar was very precious at that time and was not an ingredient that commoners could afford to consume, it was rightly not widely spread.
Japanese plum wine has become very popular in modern times, and private production has flourished. Various movies and TV dramas have featured plum wine, such as the decades-old umeboshi (plum wine) made by Grandma in the famous movie, “Umekaido Diary,” and so on. However, before the liquor tax law was changed in 1962, it was illegal for private individuals to make their own plum wine. CHOYA, a famous plum wine maker, started making plum wine in 1959, before the liquor tax law was changed. After the revision of the liquor tax law in 1962, more families began to make their own plum wine and other fruit wines, and more people began to enjoy this sweet and sour easy-to-drink fruit wine, and CHOYA grew and became a world-renowned plum wine maker. In addition, the definition of “Honge Plum Wine” launched by “Nippon Sake Sake Brewing Group” in 2015 has made plum wine separate from the natural raw material plum wine and various additives and poor quality alcohol plum wine in the market mixed with the barbaric growth of plum wine, which contains only plums, Bengoku Plum Wine, which contains only plums, sugar, and wine (with no sour additives, colors, flavors, preservatives, etc.), is easier to distinguish and is loved by more people.
🤗 02 Plums, an ingredient of plum wine
Plums used to infuse plum wine
One of the essential ingredients for umeboshi is umeboshi (plums). It is commonly thought that umeboshi is made from umeboshi (green plums), but in fact, a variety of umeboshi (plums) can be used to make umeboshi, which is a type of liqueur made by macerating the fruits of umeboshi (plums). However, there are many varieties of plums that can be used to make umeboshi, and even though umeboshi refers only to the state of growth of the plums, there are many varieties of plums used to make umeboshi, such as the familiar Nanko plums, Shiraga plums, which are mostly used to make umeboshi, and Bongo plums, which are often found in dried plums, as well as Kuso plums, Inokashira plums, Ryukyuko plums, Rinjou plums, and Okuyin plums, among others. There are different varieties of these plums, and even green plums have a variety of different personalities. For example, plum wine made from plums with outstanding aroma and plums with outstanding acidity have completely different tastes, and adding ripe plums to plum wine makes the flavors and layers completely different. In some areas where citrus is abundant, even a small amount of citrus is added to the plum wine, giving it a citrus flavor that is truly fascinating.
🤗 03 How to Make Plum Wine
Plum wine that's been steeped in whiskey for about three weeks.
The making of umeboshi is actually very simple. First, you need to have a clean, airtight jar, then prepare fresh umeboshi (plums), sugar (icing sugar, yellow icing sugar, white granulated sugar, brown sugar are all acceptable), and sake, and then mix the sugar and umeboshi evenly, put it into the jar, and add the sake that doesn't go over the ingredients and you're ready to go. However, if you are making plum wine in Japan, you need to be careful about the choice of sake. Japan's liquor tax law stipulates that the alcohol content of the liquor used to make plum wine should be no less than 20% and that there should be no fermentation, so shochu, the base wine for plum wine, is predominant, and vodka and brandy are also used by a small number of people. Not only that, but in recent years there has been an increase in the use of gin, whiskey, rum, and even tequila.
🤗 04 Japanese plum wine
Yamazaki Distillery Barrel Aged Blended Plum Wine
Based on this background, there are numerous umeboshi available on the market in Japan, and the honky-tonk umeboshi alone is enough to make one's eyes glaze over. Yamazaki Distillery, famous for its whisky, also sells more than one type of plum wine. Thanks to the Yamazaki Distillery's own wide variety of original whiskies and a variety of oak barrels in which whisky has been matured, the Yamazaki Distillery's umeboshi also comes in a wide variety of varieties. In terms of the original spirit, plum wine is made from malt whisky distilled at Yamazaki Distillery, grain whisky distilled at Chita Distillery, which is also part of the Suntory family, and other distilled spirits (brandy, vodka, etc.), and then matured in a variety of casks in which Yamazaki whisky has been matured, and then mixed in a variety of proportions to make a bottled product. In this way, Yamazaki Distillery plum wine is not only a high-end blended whisky plum wine with malt whisky and grain whisky matured in whisky casks, but also a smoky version of plum wine aged in rare peat whisky casks, and even plum wine aged in cherry blossom casks, which have had their whisky matured in casks. These distinctly whisky-inspired plums have gained popularity against the backdrop of the whisky boom of recent years.
Japanese apricot liqueur
The most popular plum wine on the market is still shochu as the original spirit. As a traditional Japanese distilled spirit, shochu has a much richer flavor dimension than traditional foreign liquors such as whiskey, thanks to the wide range of ingredients used in shochu, and shochu-based umeshu has inherited this very well. In Miyazaki Prefecture, which is a major shochu prefecture, there are countless plum wines, and not only does each brewery have more than one type of plum wine, but there are also many places where plums are produced, such as farms, that purchase the original shochu and make plum wines for sale. This is also true in Fukuoka, a major shochu prefecture in Kyushu, where the bottle of Rakugo Umeshu pictured above is made only from shochu distilled in a single-styled still with plums and sugar. The complex aroma of tropical fruits from the sweet potato shochu distilled in a single-styled still is intertwined with the sweet and sour aroma of ume plums, and the complexity and sweetness are just right to make you want to go back for more.
🤗 05 How to drink plum wine
So how exactly should you drink such a delicious plum wine?
In fact plum wine, which is a popular drink in a sense, is quite a bit freer to drink than many liquors. For example, it is good enough to drink it neat, on the rocks, with carbonated water, like whiskey. But in the hot summer, plum wine is also a good drink to relieve the heat when mixed with oolong tea or jasmine tea. And plum wine, as a liqueur, is also active in cocktails and even performs well in specialty coffees. The sweet and sour plum wine has been on people's tables for hundreds of years, from summer to winter. During the rainy season, people start picking plums to make the next year's plum wine, which carries with it a variety of expectations and the taste of time as it settles down, week after week.
- Author:japan guides
- URL:https://japan-guides.com/article/diet-39
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