Photo courtesy of Yuasa Noen
If you travel deep into Gunma Prefecture to Takasaki City and then up into the hills in front of Mount Haruna, you'll come across the organic ume orchards of Yuasa Noen. Started over 100 years ago, this fifth-generation company is a family-run business in the truest sense of the word. Yuasa-san does the farming and sales, his father makes the umeboshi, and his wife and his mother do the packing and shipping.
Organic ume farm. Photo courtesy of Yuasa Noen.
About 20 years ago, when the third-generation owner passed away suddenly, the fourth-generation owner (the current owner's father) decided to transition all 300 trees on their 3.7 acre (1.5 hectare) farm to organic. It was a bold choice, considering only 1% of the ume grown in Japan is organic.
Ume ready for harvest. Photo courtesy of Yuasa Noen.
Yuasa Noen grows three varieties of organic ume on their farm – two large types (Nankou and Shirakaga) and a smaller variety (Orihime). After being pruned in winter, the trees bloom in March. It isn't too long until harvest, however the harvest times are slightly different for the three varieties. Orihime ume are usually ready to harvest by the end of May, with Shirakaga coming next in the first half of June, and Nankou harvested in the second half of June. Given the small size of the company (again, just 4 people), this makes harvest time manageable.
Harvesting the organic ume. Photo courtesy of Yuasa Noen.
Yuasa-san's father then gets to work turning the ume into umeboshi. The ume fruit is placed in a layer in a large container and then covered in salt. They then continue layering ume and salt until the container is full. Interestingly, while most umeboshi use a 20% salt ratio, Yuasa-san's umeboshi use only 13% salt, yielding a milder flavor.
Ume in natural salt. Photo courtesy of Yuasa Noen.
The ume are then left for 2 to 3 months (Orihime take a shorter amount of time while the larger Nankou and Shirakaga varieties take longer). After this salting process, they are removed and left to dry in the sun for 3 days. In the middle of these 3 days, the Yuasa family will turn them over by hand. The ume are then generally aged for at least a year before selling (this mellows out the flavor).
Organic umeboshi drying in the sun. Photo courtesy of Yuasa Noen.
We were impressed by Yuasa-san and his family's commitment to organic farming and traditional methods. And his dedication shows in his umeboshi, which have flavor that perfectly balances fruit, sour, and saltiness.
Father and son share a fist bump. Photo courtesy of Yuasa Noen.
Click here to shop all products from Yuasa Noen.