Plum Wine

Note Profile

Prepared

About

Plum wine is Japanese umeshu: unripe ume fruit steeped in shochu with sugar. The note is the finished liqueur, not the fruit. Its identity is a sour edge cutting a fruity sweetness. Wikipedia gives the taste plainly as sweet and sour. Choya, the largest maker, reaches for a tartness word in almost every product description it publishes. A quieter almond note sits behind that, released by the ume stone.

Scent Profile

Fruity leads and holds the note: ripe stone fruit, nearer apricot than dark plum. Sour runs directly under it and is load-bearing rather than decorative, because every source found reaches for tart, tartness or sour. Nutty follows as almond and marzipan, from the benzaldehyde the ume stone releases. Boozy sits underneath as the shochu the fruit is steeped in, low and clean rather than fiery. The sugar sweetness every source reports is scored nowhere. It is plain syrup, not vanilla and not honey, and the 32 facets have no word for it.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~5h lasting

Family Fruity

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Prunus mume, picked unripe and green, steeped whole in shochu with rock sugar for six months or more. Ume is botanically closer to apricot than to plum. The aroma-chemistry paper Wikipedia cites calls the drink Japanese apricot liqueur. Benzaldehyde from the stone is the almond carrier, and it starts high and falls during storage, which the study links to the drink gaining complexity. Finished strength is about 10 to 15 per cent alcohol. This note is the plain steeped liqueur. The Choya Special, aged in French oak, adds a smoky cask layer the base product does not have.

Usage in Perfumery

A heart note for fruit accords that need an acid edge instead of more sugar. Use it where plum or plum-liqueur reads as jam. It sits with green tea, shiso, rice and light woods. The almond tail lets it bridge into cherry and marzipan materials without turning gourmand. It will not carry a base on its own.