SOJU ARE AND THE NEW SHOCHU VODKA

SSpirits need lifting? Meet the new breed of Australian-made Korean and Japanese clear liquors: soju and shochu, respectively.

Known rather racily as Korean firewater, soju is a distilled liquor made from rice, grain or sweet potato, sometimes with added flavourings. Siblings and second-gen Korean Australians David, Monica and Michael Park substituted the conventional base products for grapes sourced from the Barossa Valley when they created Gyopo Soju (gyoposoju.com.au), the first Australianmade soju, in 2020. “A lot of modern sojus have sweeteners added,” says David. “We don’t have to do that with ours because the grapes give it sweetness.”

Gyopo Soju is now in select restaurants around Sydney, as well as some liquor retailers. It might look like vodka but it’s usually drunk neat with meals, shared with other diners as a convivial round of shots from one bottle. And the firewater sears a path through whatever you’re eating. “It’s really great with something like Korean barbecue because it’s a palate-cleanser for fatty meats like pork belly or Wagyu.”

In Victoria, Reed & Co Distillery co-owner Hamish Nugent has been developing and refining an Australian version of Japanese shochu in his Bright distillery (reedandcodistillery.com) for three years. “He’s so passionate that he’ll often get up in the middle of the night to check on his koji [grain inoculated with a shochu-specific koji filamentous mold],” says Melissa Reed, a family member who works in the business.

In late 2021, the company released its first koji-based product – Yuzushu, a barley shochu blended with local yuzu fruit – and it sold out within days. Earlier this year, it chased this with Sudachishu, a rice-based shochu combined with sudachi, a Japanese citrus, which also vanished quicker than it could make it. And there are plans for more koji spirit releases this coming summer.

Is it likely to replace your Martini? It could. Shochu shares vodka’s versatility – you can drink it on the rocks or mix it into a cocktail – but while vodka has a neutral flavour profile, shochu accentuates the taste of its base ingredients. “So although it’s a grain spirit like vodka, the drinking experience is very different,” says Reed. “Different” just might be the palate pick-me-up you’re looking for.