The $13 Bottle I’m Using to Make Spritz Cocktails All Summer Long (No, It’s Not Aperol)

I’m a complicated travel companion. I will steer you closer to brewery tours, hole-in-the-wall grocery stores, and street meat stalls over museums and monuments any day. One thing that’s true? I’ll never lead you astray, especially if we happen to be in Japan and I’ve steered you toward a sake brewery to sample one of the top greatest elixirs on planet Earth: umeshu.

Made with pickled plums that are aged in sake, umeshu, aka plum wine, is, in my opinion, being SLEPT on in the “cocktail of the summer” talks (more on that in just a moment). But no more! 

I firmly believe we all get a few “Ratatouille Moments” — when you taste something so special and novel it whooshes you through a flavorful, memorable feeling, as if you’re the food critic Anton Ego, from the movie Ratatouille. My most recent moment happened during a tasting at Sawada Sake Brewery, a 177-year-old brewery based in Aichi, Tokoname (about 2.5 hours southwest from Tokyo). 

The sweet tart, densely floral Ume Nouveau sake-based aperitif is one I instantly wrote a haiku about. I quickly bought a bottle, which involved ditching several clothing items to make space for it in my backpack.  

Of course, this is a rare and hard-to-re-create experience, but I knew I’d find a way to continue my umeshu-soaked love affair once I got home and finished my souvenir bottle. It was either that or move to Japan! So, I did the next-best (errr, more realistic) thing. I scoured multiple stateside liquor and grocery stores, before landing on a new, favorite anytime bottle: Choya Umeshu (complete with its own tiny, juicy plums at the bottom). 

Much like the umeshu I sampled at Sawada, Choya Umeshu is equal parts dessert but also flower nectar. It makes me feel like a little fairy who has landed on a particularly juicy, rain-soaked petal. Made by steeping sour ume plums in sake, Umeshu is bright, subtly sweet, and a bit more dense than your average wine. It reminds me a bit of other dense, yet versatile wines and liquors, port or Campari — a little goes a long way. It’s also my new go-to for mixing into cocktails or drinking on the rocks. 

Those same plums that float at the bottom can also be eaten (just remove the pits!). Although steeped plums often have given a lot of their flavor already to the umeshu itself, grate them into your next Japanese curry to add a bit of sweetness.

Plum wine, to me, is so accessible and easy-drinking. It can open up (or close) any meal or cocktail hour like its similarly versatile, very distant cousin: Italian Aperol. I learned this firsthand while continuing my own umeshu tour around Tokyo, where I stumbled on my cocktail of the summer: the umeshiso spritz. I knew I’d have to figure out how to re-create it at home, getting pretty darn close with what I had on hand. 

For my spritz, I first fill a third of a spritz glass with jammy umeshu, adding another third of either an earthy shiso soda (like this red shiso and apple yuzu soda from Moshi), a few drops of shiso bitters, or a shot of shiso liqueur. I top it off with sparkling water, creating a relatively low-ABV spritz and a summer full of “Ratatouille Moments,” I’m sure. 

Buy: Choya Umeshu, $13.49 for 750 mL at Total Wine

What budget-friendly wines are you stocking up on for summer? Tell us about it in the comments below.