Songhwaju (Pine-Pollen Wine)

Origin: Yeongyang, Gyeongsang, Korea

Source: Jang Gye-hyang (장계향), 1670

History

Songhwaju is a rice wine scented with songhwa — the pale-yellow pollen of pine catkins, gathered in spring. The Eumsik dimibang version (recorded under the manuscript's cover title Gyugon siuibang) is among the earliest surviving Korean witnesses for the drink, which later nineteenth-century compendia such as the Imwon gyeongjeji and Nongjeong hoeyo also set down. Jang Gye-hyang's method is a two-stage house brew: dried pine pollen is simmered in water and stirred into a glutinous-rice gruel with nuruk to start the ferment, and after several days a second, larger mash of steamed white rice and more pine-infused water is added. It sits within the book's unusually deep drinks section — roughly fifty wine recipes, about a third of the whole manuscript, which is a major reason the book matters for the history of Korean liquor. Pine was long prized in Korean kitchens as an aromatic and restorative: pine pollen likewise flavored the honeyed summer cooler songhwa-milsu, and songhwaju itself was valued for its fragrance and as a remedy for fatigue. The name later drifted — the surviving Andong Jeongjae head-family songhwaju, a Gyeongbuk Intangible Cultural Property since 1993, is in fact brewed with pine needles and chrysanthemum rather than pollen, its 松花 ("pine-flower") name joining the two characters. Jang was an early recorder of this springtime brew, not its inventor.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Gather pine pollen (songhwa) and sun-dry it.
  2. Base: wash 5 mal glutinous rice clear, grind fine; boil 5 doe pine pollen well in 3 mal water, mix in, cook to porridge and cool; mix in 7 doe nuruk and pack in.
  3. After 5 days: wash 10 mal white rice clear, steam thoroughly; boil 1 mal pine pollen well in 5 mal water, mix in, cool, mix in 3 doe nuruk and pack in.
  4. After two weeks (14 days), use it.

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