Citrus juice inside a giant still bubbled away. As yellow-tinged bubbles kept bursting, a sweet yet zesty aroma spread through the entire space. The vibrations and hum from the still seemed to transmit, bodily, the series of steps by which liquor is born. Once the alcohol is extracted and aged, a Jeju-only drink made from citrus is complete.
25th, the distillery Citrus in Sinrye-ri, Seogwipo, Jeju, which we visited, makes liquor using citrus as a raw material. Most of the residents living nearby farm citrus. The fruit tastes good, but those that are too large or too small lack marketability, making them hard to sell and always posing a disposal dilemma.
Kim Gong-ryul, the head of Citrus and the Sinrye village chief at the time, came up with the idea of brewing liquor as a way to use citrus that was hard to sell. Villagers pooled funds, and in 2012 a liquor company named Citrus was born.
Citrus produces fruit wine, wine, and brandy using citrus as a raw material. It is the result of efforts to turn citrus from waste into a local resource. Citrus says it uses about 100 tons of citrus annually to brew roughly 150 tons of liquor.
Factory chief Lee Yong-ik said, "Not only nationwide but even in Jeju, places that brew liquor with citrus are rare, which also means it is hard to become a corporation," adding, "Citrus is a place that is struggling but trying."
Serving as the plant tour guide that day, Lee, alongside CEO Kim, is indispensable at Citrus. He served as director of research and development at the liquor company Jinro and developed IIlpum Jinro.
Starting in the 1980s, he argued that distilled soju would become the mainstream and persuaded the company to launch Clear Soju in Oak Casks, which mixed distilled soju into diluted soju. Released in the late 1990s, it immediately gained huge popularity. He has now been steering the brewing direction at Citrus since its early days.
Asked "What is the most important step in the manufacturing process," Lee answered, "The ingredients." He said, "In liquor, the raw ingredients determine 80% of the quality," adding, "Jeju's weather carries significant uncertainty, so the key is maintaining uniformity in the raw ingredients."
Because Jeju's weather is so fickle, Citrus is also striving to produce uniform products. Smaller-scale liquor companies inevitably see quality vary by each year's harvest.
As is common in the fruit wine and distilled spirits sectors, Citrus secures enough base liquor in years with abundant citrus quality and yields, then blends it with base liquor made in leaner years to present high-quality spirits. It is a way to maintain consistency of taste, aroma, and alcohol content.
Lee said, "Even when I worked at Jinro, the quality of neutral spirit fluctuated, and when quality dipped we blended it with existing stocks," adding, "How much to use is decided case by case."
Down in the basement, instead of the noise from the stills and fermenters on the first floor, a quiet space unfolded with rows of oak casks. Each oak cask costs 1.5 million won, but once the base liquor inside is commercialized, it amounts to about 30 million won per cask.
Even smartphone signals do not reach here; the system keeps the temperature at 15 degrees Celsius to cold-age the base liquor. The oldest aged spirit has endured for about 10 years, they said.
Lee began, "When I went on overseas training, there were about 10,000 oak casks in the aging warehouse." He continued, "Some of the workers had their own casks, and there were straws stuck in them," adding, "I can't forget the sight of them drinking through a straw when they came in to work in the morning."
Rather than simply finding another outlet for citrus consumption, Citrus is competing in the market with results that combine local agriculture, brewing know-how, and Jeju's unique flavors. A company official said, "We re-released the popular brandy miniatures for the first time in four years and have refreshed the packaging of existing products over the past few years," adding, "We will continue to brew good liquor."