Daily life in Japan is given colour and beauty by the country’s four distinct seasons. The beginning of summer brings with it the rainy season, which leaves the fruit of the ume trees ripe and rich with organic acids.
Umeshu and umeboshi, dried ume fruit, are the result of this natural bounty of the season — with the addition of some human innovation.
Ume has been celebrated in Japan since ancient times; the fruit is praised in many of the works in Manyoshu (An Anthology of Ten Thousand Leaves), Japan’s oldest collection of poetry.
The ume is an integral part of Japan’s culture and nature, and the importance that Japanese people have placed in the ume over the years is testament to the central role of cuisine and of well-being in their daily lives.
CHOYA was launched in 1914, as a viticulturist. An encounter with ume, a fruit grown in Japan to world-leading quality, led the company to begin developing a wide variety of products.
We are determined to continue to exploit our boundless appetite for exploration and our impressive technical expertise, developed through pioneering research, in order to deliver outstanding products to consumers all around the world.
Umeshu is the tool we have chosen to communicate the spirit of Japan to the rest of the world. This is our mission at CHOYA.
