Makgeolli: Rice Wine From Korea

I have to admit I knew nothing about Korean Rice Wine when asked to join some Korean friends for dinner recently and, as they put it “come and have a wine dinner with Korean food”, I was actually expecting to be doing a pairing of grape wines with Korean BBQ – something I need to get around to doing sometime soon as well.

Korean Rice Wine does have a real name and it’s actually called Makgeolli and, unlike Chinese Rice wine which in fact is not actually made out of rice, Korean rice wine actually is made up of fermented rice and, in some cases, wheat.

It’s a strange colour too as it looks deceptively like milk – something parents need to be aware of when storing it at home if they have kids! The milky colour comes from the white rice used in the manufacture of the product.

It’s always interesting when drinks are classified as a wine as the actual definition of wine is “an alcoholic drink made from fermented grape juice”. Neither Makgeolli or Chinese rice wine contain any traces of grapes and both have distinctly different levels of alcohol to a) each other and b) to actual wine itself.

The ingredients that go into making “Upo’s Morning” Makgeolli are as follows: Korean Rice, rice koji, yeast, malt, enzyme, water and fructose which give it an alcohol percentage of 6% making it cunningly easy to drink and as it has some sweetness from the fructose it slips down the throat all too easily!

A friend of mine in Korea describes the drinking of Makgeolli as “sitting drunk”, that is, you have no real idea how drunk you are until you stand up! Then you remind yourself that you’ve been through a six pack of these over the meal and that you are in fact “legless”!

One thing I like about it is that it’s highly addictive and also a very social drink. Cheers are done each time you pour and it’s served in little cups (just around 2 or 3 mouthfuls) thus the pouring goes on and on throughout the night.

I tried the Upo’s Morning rice wine alongside another non-descript house rice wine and I have to say that the Upo’s Morning was much better. The house wine I tried was slightly effervescent and a little bit sour – either due to continued fermentation or because of something else (I don’t know!).

It has to be said that over a Korean BBQ dinner this wine is perfect as it adds to the social nature of sharing a BBQ with friends and it’s the instigator of fun and exotic topics of conversation the longer through the night you drink it! I think I shall be exploring Makgeolli more in the coming months to see how different they all are. As a lover of BBQ too, it’s a fun and enlightening experience – just don’t stray too far from home as it can be a long and arduous walk home afterwards!

Upo’s Morning Makgeolli is imported into and distributed in Hong Kong by Lexdium limited and if interested you can contact them by phone on (+852) 3748 9217 or email Suji on sales2@lexdium.com