Anyone who’s been out in Korea at night knows about soju, the popular Korean distilled liquor, always served with samgyeopsal, strips of pork belly. But soju isn’t the onl　y traditional tippler on the peninsula: There’s also makgeolli, fermented rice wine, which was ubiquitous until the 1960s but later lost ground to soju and Western alcoholic beverages such as beer, whiskey and wine. But makgeolli is now back, this time winning fans in an unexpected quarter: among Japanese tourists. This isn’t just because of the price difference — a one　-liter bottle of makgeolli sells for 800 yen in Japan but the equivalent of just 150 to 200 yen here — but also because the wine supposedly tastes better before going through the sterilization process required for export. Perhaps the most important reason, however, is the appeal of the special experience of tasting makgeolli in a minsokjujeom, a traditional Korean drinking house. Accordingly, local tourist agencies are busy coming up with packages offering Japanese visitors trips to jujeom, most located in the Myeong-dong and Jongno areas in downtown Seoul . Meanwhile, in Japan , makgeolli is no longer an exotic novelty, with the number of bars offering several different types on the rise in trendy Tokyo areas such as Shinjuku, Ginza and Shibuya. “We have sold 3.4 billion won ($2.74 million) worth of makgeolli in Japan last year, and sales of the liquor have grown 20-25 percent annually over recent years,” said Lee Jin-seong, director of E-dong Rice Wine Brewery, the first Korean company to export makgeolli to Japan, through a Japanese affiliate established in 1993. At Foodex Japan 2009, an international food trade show held in March at Makuhari Messe near Tokyo, the  had a long line of curious visitors awaiting their turn to sample the rice wine and perhaps even strike an import deal. According to the Korea Customs Service, 4,891 tons of makgeolli were shipped overseas last year, a 25.4 percent increase from 2007, worth $4.02 million, a leap of 53 percent on-year. Bae Yong-joon, the Korea Wave star known in Japan as “Yon-sama” – “sama” is an honorific suffix in Japanese – has climbed on the bandwagon, inking a deal with Kook Soon Dang, Korea’s leading traditional wine brewer, to produce a special makgeolli named Gosireh, after his restaurant chain in Japan. “Gosireh makgeolli, which was introduced in Japan in April, had sold about 30,000 bottles as of the first week of May, ranking at the top in terms of all kinds of liquor sales in the onl　ine market on Yahoo! Japan,” said Koh Bong-hwan, marketing team manager at Kook Soon Dang. Even taking into account Yon-sama’s huge popularity in Japan , such high sales in such a short period says something. Why are so many Japanese customers attracted to makgeolli? “Makgeolli is gaining popularity because it is low proof, with an alcohol content of 6 to 7 percent, so that weak drinkers can also enjoy it, and it’s also been proved to be healthy, as it contains lots of lactobacilli and fiber, matching up with the ‘well-being’ trend sweeping the world and Japan,” said Shin Woo-chang, deputy director of the research institute of Kook Soon Dang Brewery. The liquor was even found to be effective in suppressing cancer as well as preventing high blood pressure in a report released last year by the research team at the Department of Food and Nutrition at Silla University in Busan. Makgeolli brewing mainly consists of two processes – the making of the rice malt, or nuruk, and the fermenting of steamed rice. Nuruk is an essential ingredient to make makgeolli, as it facilitates the fermentation of rice starch into sugars. It is usually made with crushed rice, placed in a wooden box for about a week until it begins to mold. The nuruk is then added to a mixture ture of steamed rice and water to produce an undiluted makgeolli, which will later be mixed with a fixed quantity of water to get an alcohol content of 6 to 7 percent. Makgeolli dates back to the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392), when it was also called “ehwa wine” – ehwa is the Korean word for pear blossom. The name came about because nuruk was usually made about the time the pear trees bloom. “Since it was the first wine made by our ancestors thousands of years ago, it is fair to say that makgeolli is the prototypical traditional wine of Korea . Other Korean rice wines, like yakju, actually originated from makgeolli,” Shin said. In fact, makgeolli was the most popular alcoholic beverage in Korea until the 1960s, when it accounted for about 70 percent of domestic alcohol consumption. At that time, Korea was still an agrarian society, with the greater part of the country’s population being farmers. Nongju, another popular term for makgeolli, literally means “farmer liquor” in Korean, after its traditional consumers. “Makgeolli was called ‘nongju’ due to its popularity among farmers, though it was not meant solely for them,” said Yu Tae-jong, a food engineering professor at Korea University . “Makgeolli was actually the alcoholic beverage usually enjoyed by commoners due to its accessibility, as it is made from rice, the staple of the country,” he explained. However, with the ban on the use of rice to make makgeolli by the government in 1965 due to a chronic food shortage, makgeolli makers started to use other grains instead, affecting the taste and turning the public against it. The ban on rice makgeolli was lifted in 1971, but by then the damage was done. With the introduction of various Western alcoholic beverages like whiskey and wine in the boom years of the 1970s, the percentage of the population consuming makgeolli fell as low as single digits. But the drink recovered a few years ago and is now back in the limelight, Shin at Kook Soon Dang said, thanks to the “well-being” health craze. Scientific research purporting to show that the fermented rice wine had health benefits, in addition to its low price and relatively low alcoholic content, helped boost the popularity of makgeolli, he said. “Advances in the quality and taste of makgeolli in recent years apparently contributed to recapturing the old generation, who often feel nostalgia for makgeolli, which they used to drink in their younger days, while makgeolli makers’ efforts to popularize the liquor by packaging it in cans and fancy bottles have succeeded in winning the hearts of young and new customers,” Shin said. And as evidenced by the introduction on the local market in April of the so-called “cocktail makgeolli,” a more versatile and colorful variety mixed with fruit flavors such as strawberry and grape, makgeolli’s evolution continues down the path to capturing the hearts of Korean customers and those around the world.

By Park Sun-young

Makgeolli is derived from a fermented rice

paste called nuruk, which is then diluted with

water to achieve an alcohol content of 6 to 7

percent. The active cultures in raw makgeolli

are thought to have health benefits.