How Long Should I Pickle My Plum Wine?

So you’ve decided to try making your own plum wine.

You’ve put in the hard work of tracking down plums, washing and coring them one by one, and now they’re all bottled up with the other ingredients and ready to be stored away.
How exciting!

But now, you face the most important question: how long will it be before you can drink it?

As a general guide, 3 months of pickling time leads to a refreshing-tasting plum wine. 6 months to 1 year creates a taste and texture similar to that of store-bought plum wine. 2 years or longer gives plum wine a richer, deeper flavour.

Plum Wine Science! What Goes on Inside the Bottle After You Put it Away.

After 3 Months of Pickling…

At this point in time, the contents of the plum fruit have completely dissolved into the liquor. The plum wine should be flavourful, nutritious, and ready-to-drink.

Past 3 months, the healthful vitamins and antioxidants inside the plum seed will start to leach out into the alcohol as well, so you could wait longer if you want to get the most nutrition out of your plum wine.

As for the plums in your plum wine, it’s up to you whether to remove them or not. Some people remove them after 3 months, and others don’t take them out until they want to drink the plum wine.

If you want to eat your plums, we recommend pickling them for at least 6 months; that’s enough time for the fruits to become soft but not long enough for the seeds’ bitterness to leach into the fruit.

After 6 Months of Pickling…

The rock sugar in the bottle has now broken down at a chemical level. As the plum fruits and their seeds continue to dissolve into the liquor, they combine with the sugars from the rock sugar. As a result, the plum wine’s texture gets smoother and the liquor’s flavour mellows out.

After More than 6 Months…

The longer you pickle your plum wine, the thicker it will get. You might also notice that the colour of the plum wine, which starts off as a light amber tint, gradually gets darker as time passes.

Can I Pickle My Plum Wine for 50 Years???

In theory, you can! 🙂

Plum wine, like all alcoholic beverages, might have a “best before” label in compliance with your local food safety laws, but it will never truly “expire” and become unsafe to drink. If you properly disinfect your plum wine jar and prepare your plums before pickling them, your plum wine should be good to drink for decades.

In Japan, many parents make a jar of plum wine when their child is born and keep the jar safe until their child turns 20 years old. On their child’s 20th birthday, the parents open the 2-decade old jar of plum wine and drink it with him or her as a coming of age celebration. This works out perfectly because 20 years is the legal drinking age in Japan!

(Of course, some families can’t stand the long wait and end up opening and drinking the wine before the kid turns 20. )

If you want to try old plum wine without waiting, try CHOYA’s “CHOYA Aged 10 Years” plum wine. This premium vintage plum wine was first released in 2015, and every bottle is guaranteed to be at least 10 years old. Supply is highly limited however– Plum wine fans in Japan have nicknamed this product “The Phantom Plum Wine” because it’s so hard to find.