Yuzu booze & other deliciousness
It took six years to produce their first big crop. Two very patient buyers took the lot and turned it into an award-winning brew.
“I was selling plants on Trade Me, and these two brothers bought some stuff off me. I didn't know them from a bar of soap.”
One of them noticed the family's yuzu tree in the garden and asked about it.
“He said, ‘I brew beer in a garage, when you get some fruit, I wouldn't mind making beer from it, here's my number.'
"Three years passed, and I'd forgotten all about it, and he rings me to ask how the yuzu is coming along.”
The man was Peter Gillespie. He and his brother Ian founded Wellington craft brewery Garage Project. They bought Neville and Junko's entire inaugural crop. They peeled and juiced it by hand, added honeydew melon, and used it to create a beer they called Wabi Sabi – “It's got a very strong yuzu flavour,” says Neville. It promptly won a gold medal at the NZ Brewers Awards in the Specialty, Experimental, and Aged category.
Five years later, the now hugely successful Garage Project is still the Chun's biggest customers. They've since created other award-winning brews from yuzu, including Pernicious Yuzu Weed (an Indian pale ale using green yuzu) and Yuzukoshō (a pilsner with green yuzu, green chilli, and salt).
Another regular customer is Martinborough olive grower Nalini Baruch of Lot Eight. She was the first in the world to use the agrumato method with yuzu, crushing the skins with olives, then pressing them together to create a fragrant oil.
The couple also sells fruit directly to chefs – world-renowned chef Monique Fiso of Hiakai visited the orchard earlier this year – foodies, and Wellington supermarket Moore Wilsons where a bag of 3-4 yuzu costs $7.95. If you want to buy fruit, you can message Neville via the NZYuzu Facebook page.
The Chuns now have 400 trees and pick two crops a year. The first is unripe, green fruit in April.
“Green yuzu has a really strong, peppery-lime taste, almost like a kaffir lime with pepper,” says Neville. “The juice is very sour and intense, almost green (in colour), and the Japanese really relish that. It's a common thing with a lot of Japanese crops, where (the Japanese) pick something completely unripe and make something delicious from it, then make something completely different with the ripe fruit.”
The green peel is turned into a savoury flavouring, such as yuzu kosho, a type of mustard made using chillies and salt. Freshly made yuzu kosho is inedible, says Neville. It's extremely salty and burning hot. It needs to cold cure for at least three months, up to a year, to develop its unique flavour.
“A really small amount would flavour a soup or a sauce, or you could use it as a replacement for wasabi. Put it in soya sauce and it gives it a beautiful flavour (known as ponzu).”
The main crop of ripe, yellow fruit is ready from mid-May until the end of June.
“It's a lot more floral. The juice is lighter, the peel is softer, less harsh. Instead of adding salt (to the peel), you add sugar and sweeter elements.”
One of the most popular recipes is yuzu cha (tea). The fruit is juiced (and the juice saved for use in other dishes). The peel and membranes are chopped, mixed with sugar, and then cold cured for 1-2 months. It turns into an aromatic, golden-coloured syrup. "Soften some vanilla ice cream and mix it in, or drizzle over a pavlova," says Neville. "The most popular thing to make is yuzu cha. Add it into a hot cup of water, or cold soda water for yuzu soda. It's really up to the imagination of the person wanting to use it.”
A cold cure yuzu preserve used to flavour drinks, desserts, and baking.
This uses the peel of green yuzu, mixed with chillies and salt, then cold cured for at least three months.
A dipping sauce of yuzu juice, soy sauce, bonita flakes, mirin, rice vinegar, and kombu seaweed.