[Soju] Samhaeju, Seoul's hundred-day royal rice liquor

Samhaeju (삼해주) is a medicinal rice wine brewed in three stages, each begun on a pig-day of the lunar calendar, which is where its name, meaning "three-pig-day wine," comes from. Because the whole process takes about a hundred days, it is also called the hundred-day wine, and since it was traditionally finished around the time willow catkins drift through the air, people also know it as willow-catkin wine.

The recipe is said to trace back to the Goryeo royal court, and Joseon-era tradition holds that a princess carried it into the Andong Kim clan, who kept brewing it for generations. By the eighteenth century demand had grown so large in Seoul that officials worried about rice supplies being diverted into its production, and the Mapo district became known as a center for brewing it at scale. Over time, the same fermented mash also became prized as a base for distilling soju, which is how the clear yakju and the stronger soju version both survive today.

In Mapo-gu, a workshop keeps this craft accessible to visitors. It offers a casual tasting, a hands-on distillation-experience session, and a longer academy course for anyone who wants to understand traditional Korean liquor in more depth. Because the underlying wine is only brewed once a year, starting on the first pig-day of the first lunar month, timing shapes what you might see being made, though bottled soju itself is available year-round.

To visit, you need to call ahead(send us a request to make a reservation. We are happy to help!); the workshop is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and otherwise runs from ten in the morning to five in the afternoon. It sits at basement level in Seongsan-dong, Mapo-gu, and has parking on site. A bottle of samhae soju, whether tasted there or found through an online liquor-delivery platform, is one of the few living threads back to a drink once brewed for Seoul's royal court.