We picked up this Tamajiman Umeshu from the Ishikawa Brewery in Fussa following a tour of the premises and tasting of their products in 2018.  It’s plum sake liqueur made from the brewery’s junmai-shu line with an alcohol content of 10-11%. It’s recommended for ‘mixing with soda, hot water, and many other drinks’.

The liqueur is a clear golden straw colour with a fragrant sour Japanese plum and strong alcohol nose.

Served on the rocks (umeshu rokku), the liqueur has a syrupy mouthfeel. The sweet and sour notes of the ume are both intense with the pronounced acidity in the body dramatically slowing down our consumption, although the characteristically bitter notes of alcohol are notably absent on tasting.

Served as an umeshu soda with 2/3 carbonated water, crisply sweet notes of ume came through mellow ahead of a pronounced tart ume flavour that developed to prominence in the body and lingered through to a lightly mouth-puckering finish with the bubbles from the carbonation leaving a clean aftertaste. This is, far and away, our most preferred way to enjoy this umeshu.

Served hot and mixed with 2/3 green tea (o-cha-wari), an initial bitterness in the head developed with pronounced sour ume notes in the body for a notably bitter, mouth-puckering astringency in the finish that lingered on the palate. The green tea brought out the bitterness of the alcohol and the sweetness in the liqueur, while the strength of the liqueur also masks the green tea. We used one tea bag of Twinings Green Tea in 150 mL of water at 80°C for 90 seconds. A Japanese green tea or a loose leaf green tea may work better.

This Tamajiman Umeshu contained 720 ml. It was produced in Japan and purchased in Tōkyō, Japan in 2018.