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Old brand, brand new:Majuan
November 27, 2009
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Finally, it seems, wine has won over a fair share of Korean consumers. The brand that helped pioneer that trend is Majuan, which was the first wine made in Korea using Western techniques. The wine came about after a decision in the late 1970s by the late President Park Chung Hee to ban the use of rice to make alcohol in an effort to ease a dire food crisis that had consumed the nation. At the time, rice was the base of many Korean alcohols including makgeolli, which was a popular drink at the time. On the heels of this decision, Oriental Brewery, which later become Lotte Liquor BG, created a team that would develop Korea’s first wine. The group was led by Lee Soon-joo, who learned wine-making skills in Germany. After numerous tests, the development team settled on using riesling and seibel grapes. Lee and his team started to look for land that had similar soil and weather conditions as Germany. They found what they were looking for in Milyang, South Gyeongsang, and Cheongha and Pohang, North Gyeongsang. The areas were chosen because they had little precipitation and lots of daylight. The group planted the first grape seeds in 1973, and after three years the ripe fruits were collected and then put into stainless steel tanks. Kim Joon-cheol, 62, who was part of the team and now owns a company that imports wine, said because there weren’t any automatic systems back then, employees had to go inside the 30,000-liter tanks to wash and clean them after the grapes fermented. In May of 1977, Oriental Brewery introduced the Majuan brand, offering both red and white wines. But it took time for Korean consumers, who were accustomed to the stronger taste of soju and the sweeter flavor of grape juice, to get used to the wine. But it did gain a following in time. At the peak of its popularity, more than 6 million bottles of Majuan sold in a single year. To meet that demand, the company had to process as many as 500 tons of grapes daily, and trucks were lined up for more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) to transport the grapes. Through last year, roughly 100 million bottles of Majuan had been sold. By Lee Ho-jeong [ojlee82@joongang.co.kr] |
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