Getting domestic: Ume wine

It’s officially the beginning of rainy season, the time of the year when it seems like nothing dries and you live in constant fear of umbrella thieves. Not a whole lot of rain thus yet, but it’s coming, oh yes. I can feel it in my bones.

One of the great things about the onset of rainy season is the sudden influx of ume, or Japanese plums, in stores. (Rainy season is called ??–tsuyu or baiu–plum rain. Love Japanese and it’s obsession with the seasons!) These inedible little beauties are the key ingredient for umeshu (plum wine), one of my favorite alcoholic beverages. Ranging from spicy to mellow, tart and tangy to sweet, I could drink the stuff into oblivion if allowed.

It’s a hobby, for the industrious housewife or strange foreigner, to make umeshu when the appropriate season rolls around. I went a bit overboard this year, buying 6 kilos of plums to send to their watery deaths. For this year’s rainy season celebration, I decided to give red and white wine a try. I’ve only seen, and drank copious amounts of, it once in a bar in Shimo Kitazawa, but it was love at first taste. This website tells me it’s ok to make, and not some crazy culinary adventure that is going to waste two bottles of wine.

As opposed to normal liquor, such as shochu or brandy, ume wine is supposedly ready to drink in two or three weeks. I am counting down the days, the hours, the minutes!