Hana Kohaku

As my craving for plum wine, today I continued the 'unfinished battle' to find my favorite Hana Kohaku in town :) After last week I only got Bohae Plum wine, today I kept wandering around the city , take a quick peek at liquor shops one after another and eventually I found it! It's a liquor shop in Chinatown I always passed by every weekend but never thought they would sell this Hana Kohaku. I need to take $40 out of my pocket for one bottle of 720 ml.

Hana Kohaku is a unique Japanese sake contains plum juice and extract thus tastes a bit sweet and the aroma of umeshu is just so enticing and thrilling your taste-buds. This Hana Kohaku is a product of Tatsuuma-Honkee brewing company from Nishinomiya-go of Nada district, the largest sake-producing region in Japan. This brewery is also the brewer of Sake 'Hakushika' brand, which brewed with selected rice and 'Miyamizu', natural water from Rokko Mountains. Miyamizu known as one of the best 100 waters of Japan which contains a lot of proper mineral for brewing sake. Sake brewed with Miyamizu is characterized by a dry taste.

Here is a taste-chart of Hakushika products:

(picture courtesy of Hakushika)

Bohae Plum Wine

It's a lazy sunday for me as the temperature's getting cool and feels like a good time to hibernate. I was too lazy to cook so just prepared my Tuna rice bowl, apart from the rice, it took me not even 5 minutes as I used canned Tuna :) It's a bowl of warm jasmine rice served with Tuna mixed with mayonaise, topped with some roasted seaweed sprinkle and katsuoboshi (grated fish flake).

My Tuna rice bowl

Today's best part was: Plum wine! It's hard to find my favorite Hana-Kohaku sake (Japanese plum wine) in the city so I got this Korean Plum wine instead. It's an imported Korean Plum wine from Bohae brewery. This plum wine goes well with raw fish and fresh food, I really love the sweet taste and exotic aroma of Plum wine.

Korean Plum wine

Purezento

Today I got some 'purezento' from my missus, as I have promised her that I would post her 'presents' on my blog and now I gotta keep my words! Here are some of the presents:

- Our Memories, it's a very first web created for my special day, it's more like an 'experiment' web and even I feel that the contents would make us look like 'narcist' :) anyway, I give her the credits for the efforts of digging out our old paper-printed photos, digital camera was still a luxury back then when we married, restoring them in digital files, and uploading the snippets on the web.

So if you wanna take a peek on our journey over the last 7 years, please clik on Our Memories

- A set of my favorite deserts and drink: Durian ice cream, strawberry mochi, and a Korean Plum wine.

- Emi Fujita CD

- 3 nights weekend getaway for Easter long weekend to Cairns, a famous destination of Tropical North Queensland (can't wait to board the plane)

- On the top that I still asked her "How about a DSLR ?"

My strawberry ice cream mochi

Durian ice cream

Plum wine

Black Raspberry wine

In the mood of Ume blossoms (in Japan), I was looking for Umeshu (Japanese plum wine), but no luck! Couldn't fine this favorite wine of mine in the city, eventually I got a Korean Black Raspberry wine instead.

My Black raspberry wine

This Bohae Bokboonjajoo (Black Raspberry wine) is the world's best black raspberry wine, that's what its brewery company claimed. A small bottle of 375 ml for $17, above average price if I compare to normal western wine. This enchanting purplish color wine won the silver medal at 2005 Dallas Morning News International Wine Competition, indeed has a superb taste and less sweet compare to plum wine. This wine was also selected as a official wine for APEC 2005's dinner party.

For you wine lovers, this one is worth a zip!

Talking about wine, I got some unique and funny wine pictures taken last year during my visit to Hunter Valley, a famous winery region in Australia.



This one is Sakura Shiraz from Windowrie brewery in Cowra, I got this when visiting Sakura Masturi in this small country town last year.

Sakura Shiraz