Choya Umeshu and Shiso: What Honkaku Umeshu Actually Requires

Umeshu is the most misunderstood Japanese drink on any bar list, mostly because the cheap version and the serious version share a shelf and a name.

Honkaku Umeshu

Japanese labeling recognizes honkaku umeshu, authentic umeshu, and the definition is refreshingly strict.

Three ingredients. Ume, sugar, and distilled spirit. Nothing else. No added acidulants, no flavoring, no coloring, no fruit juice concentrate standing in for actual fruit.

Most mass-market umeshu is not made this way. It is cheaper to build a plum-flavored liqueur from a small amount of ume extract plus acid and sweetener. It tastes like it, too: uniformly sweet, one-dimensional, and slightly synthetic on the finish.

Choya's authentic umeshu meets the honkaku standard. What is in the bottle is Kishu Nanko ume, sugar and spirit, and the fruit is doing the work.

Nanko Ume

Nanko is the premium ume cultivar, grown mainly in Wakayama Prefecture, historically called Kishu.

Ume is not a plum, despite the standard English translation. It is closer to an apricot botanically, and it is inedible raw: too sour, too hard, and containing compounds that make eating it unwise. Every traditional use, umeboshi, umeshu, ume syrup, exists because the fruit has to be transformed before it becomes food.

Nanko is prized for thin skin, large soft flesh and a small stone, which means more fruit per kilo and better extraction when it steeps.

The steeping is the entire process. Whole ume go into spirit with sugar and sit for months, and the fruit slowly gives up acid, aroma and a faint almond note that comes from the stone. That almond character is the tell of a real umeshu.

The Shiso One

The shiso version is the same base with red shiso leaf infused into it.

Red shiso, akajiso, is the same leaf that makes umeboshi red. It is not a fruit flavoring, it is an herb: minty, faintly medicinal, with a distinct cooling quality and a vivid natural color that comes out purple-red in an acidic environment.

Pairing it with ume is not novelty. The two have been used together in Japanese preserving for centuries, and the herbal edge cuts the sweetness in a way nothing else does. The result is more tart, more savory, and less obviously a dessert drink than plain umeshu.

How to Drink Them

Chilled, neat or on the rocks, in a small wine glass or a rocks glass.

Soda is also a legitimate serve and lightens both considerably. If you find umeshu too sweet as a category, umeshu and soda over ice is usually the fix.

Neither wants to be warmed.

Pair Them With

The plain umeshu with rich fried food, karaage, or fatty toro, where sweetness against fat works well.

The shiso one with sashimi and cucumber sunomono. The herbal, cooling character sits well next to raw fish.

Try It at Juraku

Choya's umeshu bottles are on the list at Izakaya Juraku, Lower East Side, alongside the aged Mito no Kairakuen umeshu and the Hinomaru whisky cask one. Check the current menu or ask us what is open.