Alice Jun

"Sool is an ancient style of rice wine. It has over two-thousand years of documented history. Our style is distinctly influenced by the style of brews that I grew up with—a wilder, more natural, more gastronomical style of Korean wine. And for those who are curious about going deeper, there is always something more." – Alice Jun

Alice Jun remembers makgeolli as an important ingredient of her upbringing in the '90s in her Los Angeles Korean American community. Her father, a first-generation immigrant, taught her how to brew the mixed-culture sedimented rice wine at home. His style, brewed from brown rice, was rustic and traditional—much stronger and drier than the lighter, aspartame-sweetened version exported to grocery store shelves, which many in the Korean diaspora had become used to.

In this week's episode, Alice tells the story of how she went from bootlegging her father's recipe from her NYC shoebox apartment to starting Hana Makgeolli, the first craft makgeolli brewery in the US, and how the explosion of Korean pop culture and a rapid consumer-driven appetite for craft Asian beverages is changing the landscape of American gastronomy.

Automatically generated transcripts often make mistakes. Find a corrected version here.

Learn more about the different types of sool.

Skurnik Wines & Spirits

Follow us on Instagram

Transcript

Alice Jun 0:03

Sool is an ancient style of rice wine. It has over 2,000 plus years of documented history. Our style is distinctly influenced by the styles of brews that I grew up with. A wilder, more natural, a more gastronomical style of Korean wine and Korean alcohol. And for those who are curious about going deeper, there is always something more.

Harmon Skurnik 0:31

Hey, this is Harmon Skurnik, and welcome to another episode of Skurnik Unfiltered, where we peel back the layers and get behind the scenes of our favorite wineries, winemakers, and producers of Asian beverage, let's say. Today we have a special treat here with Lok Yan Li, who is the assistant portfolio manager for all things Asian beverage here at Skurnik. About 10 years ago, we started our Asian beverage portfolio with sakes from Japan, and we've since expanded into many, many areas of Asian beverage, including some local product here. We have this wonderful Korean sool, which is made here in Brooklyn, New York. Lok, welcome.

Lok Yan Li 1:17

Thank you for having me.

Harmon Skurnik 1:18

You recently sat down with Alice Jun, the proprietor of Hana Makgeolli.

Lok Yan Li 1:24

Yeah, I'm really excited for this one. We'll be talking about Hana Makgeolli, but I think the conversation is more than just Korean rice wine. I think something bigger is happening in the industry and what Alice is doing. Of course, she's been building this brand and the products for the past six years, but I also see it her opening doors for other rice fermented beverages.

Harmon Skurnik 1:50

She's based here in Brooklyn, New York.

Lok Yan Li 1:53

Correct.

Harmon Skurnik 1:53

And if I'm not mistaken, she was really the first to open up a craft brewery to make these products in America.

Lok Yan Li 2:04

Yes, yes, yes.

Harmon Skurnik 2:05

I mean, she's a pioneer, basically.

Lok Yan Li 2:06

Correct, correct, correct.

Harmon Skurnik 2:08

So, Lok, for the benefit of listeners who may not know what Korean sool even is, how would you describe the difference between, say, sool and Japanese sake, for example?

Lok Yan Li 2:21

Well, let's go back on defining what sool is. So it actually means Korean alcohol, so makgeolli will be under that umbrella. If you're talking about the difference between makgeolli and sake, although the two of them may look very familiar in a glass, if we're talking about nigori, they're two very, very different things.

Harmon Skurnik 2:41

Even though they're both brewed from rice, with water, and they have a starter, which, in Japanese sake it would be koji.

Lok Yan Li 2:48

Correct.

Harmon Skurnik 2:48

And in Korean makgeolli, it would be nuruk, right?

Lok Yan Li 2:52

Correct, correct.

Harmon Skurnik 2:53

Am I getting an A so far?

Lok Yan Li 2:54

You're getting it! When I think about sake nowadays, I'm like, Oh, it's more about purity and singularity, right? Generally speaking, tasting sake, you get more fruit, more roundness, whereas makgeolli, there's wild fermentation happening, less control, and it's more vibrant and bold. We are getting grassy, earthy, and it's so expansive with makgeolli. And I'm still learning all of that.

Harmon Skurnik 3:26

I mean, that's an interesting way you describe it because I think you can actually tell that visually sometimes. The purest version of sake is extremely clear in the glass. And when you taste the makgeolli, it's milky white, and it couldn't be more different, even though they're both made from rice, right?

Lok Yan Li 3:42

Correct. I feel like sake has laid out a strong foundation for mokgeolli to enter this space as well. As I was saying before, makgeolli is a little bit more expansive just because of the nuruk. It's a little bit wilder than sake. With that, you can pair more food.

Harmon Skurnik 4:01

What types of foods go great? Would it be spicy foods?

Lok Yan Li 4:06

Yes. I was about to say Thai food, definitely spicy food. I'm lazy, I get takeout, I'm having a cheeseburger. I will have a Takju 16. My favorite brew is the Hwaju 12, and that's the botanical brew, and there's chrysanthemum. It's so lactic, and it's high in acidity, and it's just so tasty.

Harmon Skurnik 4:30

It's definitely not boring.

Lok Yan Li 4:31

It's definitely not boring.

Harmon Skurnik 4:33

Well, let's talk a little bit about Alice herself. She is really a remarkable entrepreneur and an amazing person. We're gonna listen to your conversation with her very shortly. How would you just describe her?

Lok Yan Li 4:46

Oh my gosh. Definitely charismatic, kind. She's really cultivated a community here in Brooklyn. And hearing her story—she's from California—and how she learned to brew from her father and how he makes really strong brews. And one of the products, Hyunmi Takju—that's from him. This is specifically made from brown rice, and that was the makgeolli she grew up drinking. Another thing that's like particularly interesting to me beyond what she's making, she's creating space for rice-based ferments. And I feel like suddenly now there's room for smaller producers, homebrewers, that are bringing traditions from other countries. And my question to you is, do you see it that way too? Do you think there will be like a ripple effect of maybe Thai Sato or maybe Chinese rice wine like entering the market? And what does that mean?

A crash course on Korean sool

Harmon Skurnik 5:43

Well, nobody can predict the future, but clearly this was a challenge for her to begin this business. And I don't think there's anybody that I know that could have been successful at it more than Alice. She is really a remarkable person, and I think on that note, we should listen in to your interview with Alice and let the listeners judge for themselves.

Lok Yan Li 6:08

Hi!

Alice Jun 6:09

Annyeonghaseyo, Lok.

Lok Yan Li 6:10

This is Lok from Skurnik, and here with me is Alice from Hana Makgeolli.

Alice Jun 6:15

I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Lok Yan Li 6:18

My podcast dreams come true. Thanks for being here.

Alice Jun 6:21

We're very excited to be here today, drinking Hana Soju 20.

Lok Yan Li 6:25

Tell us a little bit more of what we're drinking.

Alice Jun 6:28

This is our newest release with Skurnik, a table-strength soju distilled from rice without any additives and exceptionally clean. It's one of many products that we make at Hana Makgeolli. Over the last six years, we really built this portfolio and production that's centered around three main pillars: makgeolli, which is the traditional fermented styles of wine that tend to be a bit drier, stronger, a little bit more fresh and bright with its acidity; our spirits, which is Hana Soju; and then our canned makgeolli RTDs or ready-to-drink, that are more of a casual style or take on makgeolli in a very small, miniature format. We've been making these three families of products out of our brewery in Greenpoint for the last six years. And the idea is to show people the breadth of the category and make something for every opportunity for enjoyment.

Lok Yan Li 7:28

So you've introduced some of these terms in our conversation, such as makgeolli. For those who are listening that aren't familiar with those terms, can you give us a little bit more?

Alice Jun 7:38

Yeah, of course. There's zero expectation around the consumer understanding these terms, at least in the mainstream, yet. But since day one at Hana Makgeolli, what we've been trying to do is educate people around this category, and it starts with factually accurate, correct terminology. Sool is the broader term for alcohol in Korean. You can describe beer as sool or grape wine as sool, but for our purposes, we're describing the Korean alcohol category that is inclusive of fermented wines like yakju and takju, as well as spirits like soju. Yakju is characterized as a clarified style of wine existing within the Korean category, and the defining point is that it's made with the traditional fermentation starter, which you might hear me referring to later as nuruk. And then takju, which is the sedimented style or the sedimented portion of a brew, so long as it's kept above 10% ABV with sediment, it can be referred to as takju. But if it's 10% ABV or below, it's considered a makgeolli. There's a little bit of nuance there in terms of category definition based off of a finishing style, which is I think a little different from other categories of alcohol, but a great way of understanding as a consumer how a product is made.

Lok Yan Li 9:00

How would you describe makgeolli without comparing it to other products that are already in the market?

Alice Jun 9:09

We get that parallel quite a lot, between sool and sake because, ingredient-wise or input-wise, it's the most similar thing. But they are such distinct styles of alcohol. If I was to try to describe Korean sool in its own bubble without that context, sool is an ancient style of rice wine. It has over 2,000 plus years of documented history. And it's a rice and/or grain-based alcohol that is distinctly made from nuruk, which is that traditional fermentation starter. The thing that makes nuruk special and defines the Korean category is because of its polyculture nature. Kind of like a saison or a lambic, it is a mixed culture fermentation, and that's what makes Korean alcohols distinct from other styles of rice wine. I get some ridiculous questions like, Does it contain dairy? What kind of grapes is it made from? Like this kind of thing too.

Lok Yan Li 10:11

Ha! I want to hear more of these ridiculous questions.

Starting Hana Makgeolli

Alice Jun 10:13

It's the repetition of that over the course of 10 years that is difficult. It's not like any one individual conversation, but it is the accumulation of this hill that you're climbing up. If the questions were like a boulder, they just keep piling on. But over the years, I've developed so much patience and openness to this. I think in my 20s, I was a little bit more hot-headed and frustrated. I'd be like, How do you not know that there's range this category beyond, for example, the conventional style of makgeolli that's 6% ABV and aspartamed? Like, how do you not know that when you are a lover of wine and beer and sake, and you see range in all these other categories, but then for some reason, exclusively think Korean category—and not just the Korean category, but all kinds of, if you will, ethnic or culturally-backed products—that they're so homogeneous and singular. There are so many different styles to every single category, especially those coming from countries and cultures with long histories. And so now it's about redirecting that frustration into a moment of teaching and opening the mind of the consumer and being like, okay, in 2026, we live in this really exciting time in human history where globalization is affecting our lives in a way where we can access products from all over the world in a moment's instance. Well, almost, thanks to the special curation of folks like people at Skurnik. But that wasn't always the case for so many different products. And I think that we, as modern consumers, don't appreciate that enough or take it for granted. But now in today's age, because globalization gives us this tool to really expand people's understandings of categories like Korean alcohol, it also opens the door, it blasts those doors open for a deeper level of just gastronomical understanding of different cultures as well.

Lok Yan Li 12:30

What is your first memory of drinking or encountering makgeolli?

Alice Jun 12:36

For a lot of people, I think it's in the context of a home. My first encounter with makgeolli was with my dad at home. He loved to homebrew and would make various styles of Korean sool, but primarily oxidative, very dry and strong styles of yakju at home. I used to equate that with the oriental medicine my mom used to make as a Chinese medicinal practitioner. We used to drink a lot of hanyak as well, so in my mind, those two things were one and the same since I was young. But little did I know that no one thought makgeolli tasted that way. Those are my earliest memories of this very dry, lactic, and oxidated style of rice wine, which is a little different from most people's understanding or growing up with alcohol.

Lok Yan Li 13:32

At what point did it shift from a personal connection to creating a business out of it?

Alice Jun 13:40

It was really a natural transition, the way we started building Hana Makgeolli. It was never with any kind of commercial intent. Hana Makgeolli started off as this bootleg project that I was doing at home, trying to develop my own discipline and satisfy my curiosity around Korean sool through repetition and practice of brewing. But eventually that leads to too much volume of home brews in your apartment here in New York City, in your little apartment, and then led to parties, tastings, events, and pop-ups at different restaurants, all technically off the books and bootlegged still. But it was truly meant for fun. I met my business partner in 2017. He mentored me towards building Hana Makgeolli to have a commercial foundation. And that's how we started. It took about three years in total from the beginning of our partnership to launch, so it really speaks to how long and arduous of a process it is to build manufacturing capability in a completely unknown category. But after those three years, after getting to market finally in September 2020, that's when the story really started.

Lok Yan Li 14:59

What did you feel was missing in how makgeolli was represented in the US?

Reception in Korea and the diaspora in America

Alice Jun 15:05

In terms of what I felt was missing, it's a very big question, and it evolved over my career. I've been in the makgeolli space for over 10 years now, and since that starting point, the category, the industry has changed so much. If we don't just look at the US market at first and look a little bit more big-picture and globally, Korean alcohol is starting to become an emerging category in multiple markets and really reviving itself in the Korean market specifically. There's over 4,000 craft breweries in Korea making various styles of Korean alcohol, both fermented and distilled. In the US market, though, we're still in a much earlier or underdeveloped stage of the market where we're still focusing on like product accessibility, making sure that the product is available for consumers to buy at convenient places. We're looking at baseline education around what the terms are and what kind of styles are available in this category. And of course, when it comes to the number of producers, the number of producers that existed in the US market 10 years ago was maybe two or three brands. And now in the US market, you have access to about 30 different brands of Korean alcohol, whether that's imported or domestically made. Just in the last 10 years alone, we've really started to see the foundational layers of this category being not just laid but cured. If I was to think about what is in store for the Korean category of alcohol in the next 10 years, this is where I get really excited because it is more and more availability—not just consumer curiosity, but interest, drive, demand for this kind of product because Korean culture is being consumed at an even faster rate.

Lok Yan Li 17:14

You've recently entered Hana Makgeolli into Korea. What has that process been like? Has there been pushback from that community?

Alice Jun 17:25

We launched in Korea in April of last year, and it was an absolute dream come true. Hana Makgeolli's entry into Korea was so well received, and I think one of those reasons is because of our unhindering commitment to traditional values, which is very simply defined with high-quality agricultural inputs and specifically rice, as opposed to like wheat flour, potato starch, etc., that's typically in conventional styles of makgeolli; nuruk-based fermentation without koji or inoculates, which is really uncommon even amongst the craft brewing scene today; and of course, our years in the market and showing people that this traditional style of alcohol or Korean sool that we're making, that there is indeed a case for it in the US market, and that it indeed can succeed. The irony of a gyopo, gyopo is kind of a negative term, but it's a foreign-born Korean.

Lok Yan Li 18:31

Oh yeah, we have one of those in Chinese.

The growing popularity of Korean culture in the US

Alice Jun 18:35

The irony of a gyopo, starting a company that makes the most traditional styles of Korean alcohol that are even hard to find in the Korean market itself because the style is aging out of production, or maybe producers are aging out of this style of production. The irony of that is the thing that propels us forward. Hana Makgeolli from the start—maybe because I was so hot-headed and not necessarily strategic, but it turned out to be strategic—something that made us different from other makgeolli brands that entered the US market before us was that we were actively choosing not to simplify the product. We were truly trying to respect, translate, and develop understanding and consensus around what the product is. That set us apart from the very beginning. Five years later, last year, when we entered Korea with these products that represented so much, in terms of that respect for the Korean category. I think there was a moment of injeong, or understanding, where other brewers who know how difficult it is to produce in this style, know how difficult it is to go out into the market with this style, tasted our wines, and showed appreciation for the work that we were doing. As an Asian American, as a Korean American making makgeolli in the US, there's like a number of freedoms and restrictions that I operate under. And it is kind of like the inverse of what we face in Korea. When we started our production here in Brooklyn, New York, there were so many different reactions. One angle was like, Why do we start in Brooklyn and not in a place like LA? And then it led to—after the launch of our first product, the Takju 16, which is our most popular product today—there was a lot of questions around Why is it so strong? Why is it not sweet? It reveals how the Asian diaspora's understanding of a category like makgeolli is so different from the understanding of makgeolli of folks that are living in Asia. And I think repeatedly, what we see across all kinds of cultural products that are building categories of themselves within the US market is that diaspora or immigrant communities have a snapshot understanding of what these products are. The generation that immigrated from Korea to the US between, let's say, the 1970s and the 1990s, only had access to a post-industrial, post-war style of makgeolli that was 6% ABV and sweetened with aspartame. So, of course, the understanding that they bring to a market like the US is of that snapshot and influenced by their own context and their living experience and what they had access to in Korea. There is very little of the traditional category of the history of Korean alcohol that immigrated along with the Korean diaspora to America. It was really just that snapshot of a modern contemporary style of makgeolli. And then it was espoused by the Korean imports of a conventional style of makgeolli between the 1990s and now that really reassured people or gave them a sense that makgeolli is just this one thing. I'd like to say, while it's amazing that we have access to so many different cultural products in our grocery stores today, the grocery store product is not representative of the entire category or that methodology. And for those who are curious about going deeper, there is always something more. Because of this distinction and understanding, in some ways it freed us because it gave us an opportunity to, on a blank slate, say, Okay, here is our literal definition of what makgeolli is. And then stylistically, we are making a drier, stronger, natural style to show the breadth of this side of the category. And there was no one to tell us no. And then on the other hand, it was quite challenging for some people to understand and grow accustomed to because they wanted that lighter, saccharine style of makgeolli. And while that side of the category or conventional styles are still beloved and still sought after by the market, I'd like to think that our influence on the American palate when it comes to makgeolli has had a big impact. And I'm so proud of that because, going back to my beginnings as a home brewer, our style is distinctly influenced by the styles of brews that I grew up with. My dad used to brew with only brown rice. He fermented super dry, super strong, and then on top of that, aged for oxidation. Because my understanding of makgeolli was so distinct from others, it gave me a unique lens that most modern Korean people don't get to see as a part of Korea's and Korean sool's tradition of domestic homebrewing. Getting that exposure from my dad from an early age, experiencing that in the context of an ever-growing and booming Korean community and culture, Korean American community and culture, starting in LA and then moving to the Central Coast of California, that's really what gave me the reassurance to put this more traditional style that I had exposure to when I was young out into the world. While some people, when we first started, were confused by the style of makgeolli that we were making, New York being the city that it is, so open to culture, so hungry all the time, it was the perfect opportunity for us to say, Okay, here is a place that has the curiosity to be able to appreciate a wilder, more natural, a more gastronomical style of Korean wine and Korean alcohol. And let's just see where it goes. And six years later, we are here. What about from a distribution lens? How are we looking at the Korean category from Skurnik's perspective?

Lok Yan Li 25:38

Since joining Skurnik the past four years, and working very closely in Japanese sake culture, and just seeing how restaurants and bars have evolved, and of course, you talked about Korean culture, and right now society is very obsessed with K-drama, K-pop, and and that's like their foot in the door. I feel that with Korean cuisine and alcohol, the level of interest has skyrocketed at a rate that's it's growing faster than Japanese culture. And it's like, Why isn't Korean alcohol more exposed? Why don't more people know about it, get more excited about it? When I met you and we were tasting the lineup in the tap room, I was like, Oh my God, we have to take these products. We are going to miss out if we don't! I think about Japanese sake, and it's laid a lot of the groundwork. We still have our struggles with describing what sake is because people are like, Is it made out of grapes? Similar struggles of education, right? But I feel like now entering, let's say, like a Western restaurant that has a sake by the glass, it's easier for us to introduce, like, Hey, how about a domestically made makgeolli? What do you think? It's opened more doors, and there are more opportunities, and I'm excited to see where it goes. I'm optimistic.

Rapid fire questionnaire

Alice Jun 27:21

Yeah, I feel like optimistic is underselling it even. It's hard to think of a word to encompass how exciting the growth in this category is. And it happened out of nowhere. Maybe it felt like it because of COVID, because there was this five-year chunk where yes, people were drinking a lot, but the industry was not functioning per the usual. So, post-COVID, what happens is that we're seeing Korean restaurants grow at a crazy growth rate, like 10 to 12% year-over-year growth across the country. To put it into perspective, a 10-year time frame between 2008 to 2018 for sake, Japanese restaurants were growing at a rate of 6 to 7% year over year across the country. So that feeling that we get where it's like there's a Korean restaurant every corner, every single day, that actually isn't an exaggeration. We are growing at nearly double the rate of Japanese restaurants did 10 years ago. Of course, it is a different time. We are living in a much more fast-paced period than the 2010s, even. But I really do think that—especially in categories like Korean alcohol, where food and alcohol are not exclusive to one another; they're almost always paired and always served in the same context—that growth rate of restaurants really is an indicator of the progress of an alcohol category within the same cultural sector. The really exciting thing about the growth of Korean alcohol in the US market is that it is a consumer-driven demand. There are, of course, more and more exports coming from Korea, and more and more craft exports, which is really exciting. But the institution itself has not exported itself over to international markets just yet. The fact that we've gotten this far on pure consumer demand is really exciting and something that differentiates us again from the Japanese category.

Lok Yan Li 29:40

Ready for my rapid fire?

Alice Jun 29:41

Rapid fire.

Lok Yan Li 29:43

Favorite food pairing.

Alice Jun 29:44

Favorite food pairing? It's gotta be hot pot with Takju.

Lok Yan Li 29:49

NYC or Korean drinking culture.

Alice Jun 29:53

I have to choose?

Lok Yan Li 29:54

Yeah.

Alice Jun 29:54

Oh god. Um, well, Korea's drinking culture is more communal and continuous, like constant. Ha! New York's drinking culture is a little bit more curious and curated. If I had to choose it's New York for me. I heart NYC.

Lok Yan Li 30:21

Alright, last one. One word to describe Hana Makgeolli.

Alice Jun 30:25

One word?

Lok Yan Li 30:26

One word.

Alice Jun 30:27

My god. Hana means "one" in Korean. It's my Korean name, but it also means the number one. But I like to think that it represents something bigger, so I choose togetherness.

Lok Yan Li 30:42

This is my last one. What do you hope people feel the first time they drink your makgeolli?

Alice Jun 30:48

Oh, the first time they drink my makgeolli? I hope the nostalgia tickles something deep in your belly and makes you laugh.

Lok Yan Li 31:00

Thank you for being here and thank you for sharing your story. We're so excited to build this category together.

Alice Jun 31:07

Yeah, let's keep it going, Lok. We have a lot of work to do.

Lok Yan Li 31:10

Cheers.

Alice Jun 31:11

Cheers.

Harmon Skurnik 31:14

Skurnik Unfiltered is recorded at Skurnik Wines & Spirits headquarters in the Flatiron District of New York City, which is why you might hear some city noises as we go along like horns honking. If you found the conversation interesting, please consider liking, subscribing, and leaving a review. You can stay up to date on our show and upcoming events by following @skurnikwines on Instagram and visiting our website at skurnik.com