Umeshu Spritz

Japanese plum wine meets sake and soda water in this delicate, floral spritz. Sweet, tart, and effortlessly elegant.

The Umeshu Spritz is a low-ABV sparkling drink combining umeshu — Japan's traditional plum wine — with sake and soda water in a format that bridges the Japanese liqueur tradition with the global aperitivo-style spritz that became commercially dominant through the 2010s. Umeshu is produced by steeping whole green ume (Prunus mume, the Japanese plum) in distilled shochu or neutral alcohol together with rock sugar, allowing the plum's sugars, organic acids, and aromatic compounds to extract over a period of three to twelve months. Ume's flavor — tart, intensely fruity, with an apricot-and-almond quality from the stone's benzaldehyde — and the rock sugar's clean sweetness produce a liqueur of considerable depth and aromatic complexity. Commercial umeshu production in Japan is dominated by producers including Choya (founded 1914 in Osaka), Suntory, and Takara, alongside hundreds of regional artisan producers and the domestic tradition of homemade umeshu that many Japanese families continue. The combination of umeshu's sweet-tart plum intensity with sake's clean rice-wine character and soda water's effervescence produces a spritz whose flavor complexity exceeds its modest alcohol content — typically around 8-12% ABV in the finished drink — making it well-suited to the aperitivo moment and to consumers seeking lower-alcohol sophisticated options.