Hard green ume steeped whole with translucent rock sugar in a neutral spirit, the jar set aside for many months until the fruit yields an amber, honeyed, sweet-sour liqueur poured chilled over ice
Origin: Japan
From the journey of Plum.
Umeshu is the household liqueur of Japan, made not from a true plum at all but from the ume (Prunus mume), a small, hard, intensely sour stone fruit more closely related to the apricot, brought to Japan from China well over a thousand years ago and long valued as much for medicine as for flavour. The fruit is almost inedible raw, its flesh fiercely acidic and its kernel mildly toxic until processed, and Japanese cookery has accordingly built an entire repertoire around taming it: the salt-cured, sun-dried umeboshi; the syrups and vinegars; and umeshu, the steeped liqueur whose roots are usually traced to the Edo period. The method is a model of patient simplicity. Unripe green ume, picked in the brief early-summer window of late May and June, are washed, their bitter stem-ends picked out, and layered whole in a large jar with rock sugar, the two then covered with a neutral spirit. The traditional choice is white liquor, a clear distilled shochu of around 35 per cent, whose high strength both extracts the fruit and guards against spoilage. Then the jar simply waits. Over the months the rock sugar dissolves and draws the juice from the fruit by osmosis, the spirit leaches flavour and a faint almond note from the stones, and the whole slowly settles into a clear, amber, sweet-and-sour liqueur. The reward of umeshu is in the keeping: it is ready in perhaps half a year but rounder and deeper after a full year or two, and many families lay down a jar each summer to mark the season, drinking it chilled, on the rocks, or lengthened with soda or hot water through the year that follows.
Patience is the whole of this recipe: umeshu cannot be hurried, and the long, hands-off maturation is the point rather than a drawback. Traditional shochu gives the most authentic result, but a clean vodka of comparable strength is a perfectly good substitute and is often easier to find outside Japan; the high alcohol level is essential, as a weaker spirit risks fermentation and spoilage over so many months. Rock sugar is preferred for the way it dissolves slowly and evenly, drawing the juice out gradually, though some makers use white sugar or honey for a different character. Outside Japan, frozen green ume are increasingly available and work well, the freezing even helping to break the cell walls and speed extraction. Stored sealed, a finished umeshu keeps and improves for years.
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