Alice Jun Transcript
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hi, everyone. You're listening to The Future Of Food Is You, a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Abena Anim-Somuah, and each week I talk to emerging talents in the food world and they share what they're up to as well as their dreams and predictions for what's ahead. I love this new generation of chefs, bakers, and creatives making their way in the world of food, drink, media, and tech.
Today's guest is Alice Jun. Alice is the founder of Hana Makgeolli, an artisanal Korean rice wine brand produced in Brooklyn. Alice and I chat about how she went from making makgeolli in her college dorm to building a production facility and launching her beverage brand. Alice also shares how she connects with her Korean American roots through her work. Stay tuned for our chat.
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Now let's check in with today's guest. Alice, thank you so much for joining us on The Future Of Food Is You.
Alice Jun:
Thank you so much for having me Abena. It's an honor.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Can you tell us where you grew up and how did food show up in your life?
Alice Jun:
I'm a second-generation Korean American, born in Los Angeles, but I really grew up most of my childhood in the central coast of California. Food showed up in my life in a way that it does for most immigrant families as a sense or source of comfort and a way to remain connected with your culture. Korean food has been a part of my life since I was young.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Where in Korea is your family from or was there a specific dish that always made it at the table?
Alice Jun:
My mom is from Seoul. She's a city girl. And then my dad is from more in the country in a town called Cheorwon or Puchon. It's super north South Korea. There weren't any dishes that were of the region that was most common on our family dinner tables, but my family generally likes bland food, meaning really light handed in the seasoning. My favorite dishes growing up were Bugeoguk, which is a dried pollock soup or maybe like a beef and radish, like daikon radish soup, these things that have more subtle and nuanced flavors. We of course had our occasional tteokbokki and japchae and things like this, but it was mostly vegetable oriented banchan and dishes like that that we ate.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
When did you first experience makgeolli, I know you have some fond memories of your dad making it at home?
Alice Jun:
Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Can you explain what makgeolli is and then what that process was like at home?
Alice Jun:
High level makgeolli is a fermented style of alcohol from Korea that is characterized by its sedimentation, so it has a cloudiness to it or a white color to it. From a conventional perspective, makgeollis are typically 6 to 8% ABV and sweet and soda poppy. Or from a more traditional perspective, makgeolli is dry and acidic and bitter and fruity and floral and grainy and more nuanced in that way. No matter what the style is from a traditional brewing perspective the most important characteristic is that it's wild fermented and wild fermented by way of nuruk, which is the traditional and fermentation starter to Korea. Nuruk is the thing that really makes the unique chemistry and unique flavors of sool possible. That's how we define makgeolli at Hana Makgeolli.
I've been brewing sool or makgeollis with nuruk since I was a child. I don't really recall exactly what age I remember it, but I do remember steam rising from the rice off the dining room table or wiping down an onggi with Soju to disinfect.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What's an onggi?
Alice Jun:
Onggi is a traditional Korean fermentation vessel made of clay. That's what my dad home-brewed in. I've been brewing since I was a kid with him.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Were you allowed to drink it as a kid?
Alice Jun:
I would be fed like a spoonful at a time.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Okay. I was going to say.
Alice Jun:
There are stories of people reducing, I don't know, the tantrums of children or if a child is feeling really sick, they'll feed them a spoonful of makgeolli. I think in my family, my parents were open enough to let me try things.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Whose parents have not slipped a little sip of wine at the table.
Alice Jun:
Exactly.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. Not that I'm condoning that. Yeah, that's really awesome. It sounds like you had such fond memories at the table making things together and really getting to understand your Korean culture in such an enriching way. You come to New York for school, you study at NYU, what was it like experiencing food culture here? I know there's a bustling Koreatown actually not too far from us right now, and were there any favorite spots that you remembered?
Alice Jun:
Yeah, so I went to NYU's Undergraduate School of Business called Stern. That was 2011, graduated 2015. I studied Operations and Management, which is essentially stats and business review cases, curriculum. Being a college student in New York, especially from rural California, was not exactly easy.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's culture shock.
Alice Jun:
It is a culture shock and the way I dealt with it was by really staying within the NYU campus area, which is almost entirely all of downtown. My favorite spots and really the places that I could afford to eat and my more frequent meals was like the udon soup from M2M. If I felt a little splurgy, I would go over to Red Bamboo and try out their vegetarian duck and things like this. I was vegetarian at the time, so I mostly kept to restaurants around the NYU campus and places that offer vegetarian meals. I do remember that A street, the Broadway halal cart guys found me annoying because I would order chicken over rice without the chicken. I was obsessed with the taste of the rice with the lettuce and the tomato and things like this.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. Did you get the hot sauce and the white sauce?
Alice Jun:
Yeah, it would taste really good.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Alice Jun:
Those were the spots I hit up as I guess a college student. Another splurgy thing that I would do is Ramen was really kicking off at that time in the city.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, Ivan Ramen and Momofuku.
Alice Jun:
Uh-huh and like Ippudo and Ototo and things like this, so I would frequent those kinds of places as well.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You missed home a little bit, so you were also brewing some wine in your apartment, very cost-effective way. What did the process look like in your apartment and were there books or resources that you started to look into to start studying the craft?
Alice Jun:
My first batch of makgeolli was actually in my freshman dorm room and my roommate had a little rice cooker, not like a fancy zojirushi one, but-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That doesn't sing.
Alice Jun:
It goes based off of weight or something and it turns off automatically. I cooked rice in that and bought nuruk from H Mart and just mashed it into this jar and let it go. Back in that day I was not brewing off of any kind of recipe or textbook or anything like that. It was purely based off of intuition, intuition that I had developed while brewing with my dad so much as a kid. So how things should taste, how things should smell, how they should look like at any given point in the process, obviously messed up a lot of brews that way. Some turned out well though, but what happens when you mess up a ferment is you essentially end up with a lot of questions. That's when I started looking towards text and resources. Unfortunately, at the time there wasn't that much available and for me as a Korean American with limited Korean, it was hard to find resources in English. My biggest resource was actually a Facebook group.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Alice Jun:
Yeah, it's called the Susubori Makgeolli Facebook group or something like this.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
How adorable.
Alice Jun:
It's a small but mighty and really collaborative Facebook group of home brewers across the country started by people in Korea and contributed to by people all over the world and they would post blogs about how their home brews went or recipes and related research pieces and things like this. That's mainly how I started to build my technical knowledge. It was that plus continued experimentation and then learning from the correlations between the materials and the practice.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
When you say a ferment goes wrong, what does it mean? Does it taste too sour? Does it taste too bad?
Alice Jun:
Yeah, there's so many ways a ferment can go wrong purely based off of flavor. Brews can be highly acidic or can have off flavors like acetone and things like this, but those are mistakes that happen on the later end of the process. There's so much more that can go wrong at the beginning of the process or midway through related to weird growth, bacterial infection, things like this, quality of the rice, the way you cook your rice whether that went well or not, the quality of your water, et cetera, et cetera, and temperature, which most home brewers don't have access to temperature control. These things were challenges, but I was brewing so much by that point that luckily I would overcome them fairly quickly.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. How were your roommates/friends? Were they your taste testers initially? Were they familiar with sool and Makgeolli?
Alice Jun:
Yeah, so most of my roommates were really, really supportive of my home brewing practice. That was until 2016 when my home brews went from a few gallon jars to several five gallon jars and they were on my dining table next to the couch in the fridge and things like this, and it took over our lives. For that I am so grateful to have been able to experiment from the comfort of my home for such a long time and share with people through that vehicle. I eventually moved over to a small, commercial commissary kitchen facility where they allowed me to sneakily ferment alcohol in their fermentation rooms.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I'm just leaving the rice here for a long time and then it may turn into wine.
Alice Jun:
Without them, these friends and roommates, I don't think Hana Makgeolli would exist today. Not only did they give me space to brew, but they gave me feedback on the wines. They would encourage me to host dinners so that they could enjoy the wines with food. They would invite me out to do events and things like this, so without them this would not be possible, especially back in the consulting days.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. Well, yeah, that's a perfect segue into talking about once you graduate, you're not still making makgeolli full time. You actually end up getting a job in consulting where you are for quite a while, but at that same time you start to incorporate Hana into a brand. What inspired the push to incorporate the company?
Alice Jun:
It's a long story. Never was it the intention to start a brewery. Brewing at home was for fun. After school I had gotten this job at Deloitte Consulting. Before I got the job it was unfathomable to me that I would end up at a professional services firm because I didn't really know what that kind of business meant. I'm so grateful that I got the job because it helped me use the skills that I had but did not know I had in so many different contexts. There were some technical things like creating pitch decks, essentially communicating information that either people don't want to listen to or is too confusing to listen to or things that might cost them money. There was forecasting and the ability to use Excel as a powerful tool and data analytics and things like this.
I think that at Deloitte, the main thing that it helped me with was learning how to work with people, build teams, maintain them, develop them, and in a way that was scalable, structured, and fruitful and where you can treat people like people. The step between Deloitte and Hana Makgeolli, it was blurred and very natural because I was doing the home brewing at the same time as my job back in the day Pre-COVID consulting meant traveling Monday through Thursday. I would leave Monday morning work, come back Thursday night, go straight back home and start a home brew, go maintenance the other ones, take tastings and write my observations and my batch trackers back then, prepare the brew for my next week's leave, and then do it all over again. Then on some weekends if I had an event or a class or some kind of party, I would filter and bottle the wines as well.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow. You were hosting events and parties and classes as well. What were your classes about then at that stage?
Alice Jun:
You know what's so crazy? The first makings of makgeolli class that I did, which is a class that we offer at the brewery now was at the UN.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Okay.
Alice Jun:
It was crazy.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's casual. Yeah.
Alice Jun:
It was with their internal Korean cultural organization, and I did a class to about, I don't know, it was about 40 different, not necessarily diplomats-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Diplomat adjacent.
Alice Jun:
Diplomat adjacent professional folks and talk them through the history of the category, how things are made, and we tasted my makgeolli to more conventional styles of makgeolli, and then outside of those classes did mostly parties.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hey, who doesn't love a good time? Yeah.
Alice Jun:
I needed to get the makgeolli out of my house. It was getting to be too much. The events were a way of doing that and eventually they gained a momentum. It was also this very unofficial way of market validation where I started to be able to identify and see the convergence of trends. In our case back then, it was like this convergence of the interest in natural wine and Korean gastronomy and craft beer and these things all kind of moving together and towards each other. Makgeolli is at the dead center of that from a cultural consumption perspective and a technical fermentation perspective. The jump was almost subconscious.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. The Future Of Food Is You is part of The Cherry Bombe podcast network, but Cherry Bombe is way more than podcasts. Cherry Bombe also has a quarterly print magazine that's all about spotlighting women in food. This magazine is thick, printed on lush paper and filled with great photos, recipes, profiles, and features. I have so many memories of flipping through my parents' magazines as a kid, and now I love building my own collection of beautiful print magazines. Cherry Bombe is one of my personal favorites. Subscribe at cherrybombe.com and get all four of this year's magazines delivered directly to your door. All subscribers get free shipping. Visit cherrybombe.com for more or click the link in our show notes. Happy reading.
You quit your job in 2020 and you and your business partner end up opening a production facility in Greenpoint, which is beautiful, and it's got a tasting room and the facilities in the back. Before we get into the mechanics of it, I want to talk about the logo. I think it's this beautiful logo and it has an incredible meaning. Can you tell us about the name and then how you have the name with the logo?
Alice Jun:
The name Hana Makgeolli is actually quite simple. Hana is my Korean name.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Cute.
Alice Jun:
Jun Hana s my full Korean name, and when I was trying to think about names for a brand, I was like, it should be a Korean name because something using English it could read wrong. Then also Korean's not my language, so it felt false to be able to Google some Korean words that felt meaningful to me and then use them as if they were my own.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Alice Jun:
Hana, my name was the only thing that really felt mine, and so I just called it Hana Makgeolli for its simplicity. The logo, there's a bit more of a story to it. First and foremost, the process for design was the concept was to try to personify the general flavor profile of our wines. Strong, grounded, warming, and it of course had to be a woman. Then there was also this element of I wanted her to be a bit aspirational, maybe not for the customer or whoever was trying it at the time, but for myself. She was built to be this round and large figure because I wanted her to represent nurture and strength and I want it to be those things too. Then her body is also shaped like those onggi, and her head is the letter H abstractly in Korean for Hana.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow, and you did that all on your own?
Alice Jun:
Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Alice Jun:
It was without the intention of creating a brand. It was for fun.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Just for fun. Yeah. Just go to the UN for fun, start a brand for fun.
Alice Jun:
Got the stamp made online through Vista Print or something for fun. Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, it's all for fun here. Well, let's talk sool, which is Korean for alcohol. Can you tell us about the different varieties of sool that you're making right now? How would you pair them with food?
Alice Jun:
Yeah. At Hana Makgeolli we've created about 16 different cuvees of our last three years, but only six or seven of them are core and in constant rotation, or at least on a regular seasonal basis. We make makgeollis, takjus and yakjus primarily. We recently came out with a soju. By makgeolli, I mean sedimented and under 10% ABV. By takju I mean sedimented and above 10% ABV. By yakju, I mean clarified styles, and then by soju it's a distillate. When it comes to the takjus, those are our first introductory wines, and the Takju 16 and the Hwaju 12 were our first two products. The Takju is rich and heavy bodied and intensely floral and at 16% ABV it has similar nostalgic qualities that most people know from makgeolli, especially because the conventional styles that are a bit more available are fruity and sweet, but is not made like those products at all and made more in a traditional and natural way.
The Hwaju 12 is similarly made with the same rice and the same methodologies as takju, but it's designed to be lighter and drier, a little bit more acidic, and we ferment that wine with closed yellow bud chrysanthemums and hydrangea tea leaves.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It has floral under notes too.
Alice Jun:
The botanicals are added directly to the mash, that is not extract or purees. They're added directly to the mash to co-ferment for the last week of fermentation. That is more of a botanical style of wine. Then our yakju it used to be our one clarified style of sool that feels a bit more familiar, especially if people know sake, but such a broad flavor profile, more focused on a depth of grain or a grassiness rather than a fruitiness that most sake notes are known for. It also has a healthy amount of lactic acidity, so it makes you salivate and it feels kind of salty.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It'd be nice to eat with something like a big piece of protein or something like could you do it with a steak, pair it with steak?
Alice Jun:
Yeah. The yakju is something that I think pairs better with lighter, simpler dishes like a fish, the more vegetable forward banchan dishes from Korea, but my favorite thing is literally dumping it into an oyster.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow. For that brininess. Yeah.
Alice Jun:
Yeah. It has to be a briny oyster. It can't be a fatty oyster because it's a weird combo that way, but dumping it straight into an oyster and shooting it is perfect.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Alice Jun:
The hwaju that chrysanthemum hydrangea wine like ginger-steamed fish, any kind of labneh with za'taar situation, anything herbal is really good with the Hwaju 12. Then the Takju 16 it's our flagship sool. It's probably the most popular wine that we make. It holds up to the flavors that are more powerful in Korean cuisine like kimchi and gochujang and the dishes that use those ingredients, but also it's our savior when it comes to ultra spicy food. My favorite pairing is super spicy Northern Thai food or Indian food.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, it's got a little bit of a fizz situation too.
Alice Jun:
It does have a fizz. There's the lactic acidity that strips your palette clean when you're dying from spice, and then there's a little sweetness to it as well, so it helps balance things out.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I want to talk a little bit about when you finally moved to that production facility, how did you decide on building? Were you able to find the machinery to build and be able to produce makgeolli and all these other varieties at scale?
Alice Jun:
First and foremost, I'd like to mention that the jump between the passion project that was Hana and the brewery would not be possible without John Limb, my business partner. I founded the company, but he joined pretty closely after and really helped me bring to life what makgeolli could be, especially in our context. He's the one that encouraged me that because we had no blueprint, there was no other makgeolli brewery in the States at the time. There was a couple before us, but they had all fizzled out in some way and they weren't necessarily larger volume businesses. He encouraged me, despite the fact that I had no engineering skill or experience, I did have brewing skills and because of my experience as a consultant, I could figure out problems. That's how I approached the engineering end of it. The result was we borrowed equipment from different applications, so our rice cooker is actually a steamer that's used for dim sum.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Like an industrial steamer?
Alice Jun:
Cabinet steamer.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Not a little bamboo steamer.
Alice Jun:
Yeah. We could steam 200 pounds of rice in it at a time, and everything has equal layers and the steam just covers everything. There's no overcooking or undercooking. It's perfect. I found it by Googling it. Then the grinder is for more like rice cake factories where they might need to make rice flour. We pulled from other applications, and then when it came to the actual equipment itself, like the tanks and stuff, that was a bit more of a challenge, so we had to do custom fabrication. The unique thing about rice wines, rice is an extremely gelatinous grain, so being able to move and work with it is incredibly difficult when it comes to agitation and pumps and overall design. I had to find the right fabricator that was patient enough with me to be able to hypothesize what our systems could look like and design them with me.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Obviously makgeolli is made at scale in Korea. Were you able to find resources from, were there any trips that you took? Was there any travel that you did to help bring authenticity to the process?
Alice Jun:
Yeah. Absolutely. Since college and while running the bootleg operation that was on Hana Makgeolli, I went to Korea several times and each trip was of course spending time with family, but learning more about sool. I visited breweries that were larger scale and conventional styles of makgeolli to like multi-generational, small batch brewing. Frankly speaking, my heart was more interested in the latter. I was more interested in the flavors and textures and stories in the traditional styles of brewing, but I knew if I was actually going to do this, that it needed to be able to scale. It wasn't that we looked at larger scale breweries in Korea as an example of what to do, we actually used them as an example of what not to do.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Interesting.
Alice Jun:
We realized that if we want to make brews that are traditional and respectful of the history of the category, then we would have to design systems of our own because the more modern conventional methods of making used processed, bleached flowers from wheat and tapioca and things like this, a totally different starch from rice, from its properties. They don't ferment with nuruk necessarily so it's a completely different industry. That being said, it helped me make a clear decision that we had to make our own processes, we had to design our own equipment and that we had to make that investment. That was a big one.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. Have you found support from any other female founders or distillers who aren't necessarily working on Korean products, but are also doing things in this artisanal small batch sustainable way?
Alice Jun:
Absolutely. I think that when it comes to women in bev, there's very few of us, but we will find each other no matter what. My most recent collaboration with Matchbook Distilling is a great example of that. Leslie Merinoff, who steers the ship at Matchbook Distilling, she's someone that has been working in the industry for a long time, has built matchbook up to an incredible level of growth. Like me, she is on a daily basis on the production floor. Her hands are in it, she is soaked. It's really, really hard to find people that have a similar experience, and it's unfortunate. I wish that there was more, but amongst us currently, there certainly is an unbreakable sense of community. I don't think any of us would be able to stay sane without each other.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, you need your emotional support distilling dames, so to speak.
Alice Jun:
Distilling dames.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I do love alliteration. I want to talk more about your community space. After you opened the production space, you want to expand and you build this gorgeous tasting room in the front where guests can come, sample makgeolli, you have popups and you also do cocktail offerings as well. What was the inspiration behind opening the space?
Alice Jun:
Deciding on the space first and foremost was a difficult one. We are so niche, so we needed to find something small, but then we're so niche that we needed a space where we can invite people so that we can have one-on-one time with them. When we found our brewery in Greenpoint, we're on the eastern part of Northern Greenpoint where it's really industrial and no one really goes. It was 2,500 square feet. It had been abandoned for seven years. There was no natural light in the building, but we knew that one, the space had just enough square footage where we could grow. Our lease was 10 years, so we could grow within those 10 years if needed. Then we can have a small space to invite people.
The reason why it's important is because makgeolli, like so many heritage-based food or bev products, is social and there's culture and customs deeply embedded into the products. There's a certain way you want to enjoy it so that it is at its ideal. We have so many Korean restaurants in New York now. There wasn't as much back in the day and still to this day, no joomak. Joomak is a term in Korean for a tavern.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The Korean dive bar?
Alice Jun:
Something like this. It's in this context that you want people to try makgeolli and you want them to sit there for a long time, be eating with food. Then another thing about makgeolli is that it's not really precious in its consumption. With distillates or even with sake, it's like you typically drink in small glasses and makgeolli you drink out of large bowls. It's a different feeling, and we wanted to be able to create a space dedicated to that feeling. Of course, there's also the benefit of having one-on-one time with your customer, being able to collect feedback, being able to educate in the way that you want to. For all these reasons this space was really important.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
How has it been working with chefs and creating menus and popups around beverages?
Alice Jun:
Yeah, because Hana Makgeolli started off as this popup, our first popup was actually at Hanjan back in 2016, Hooni Kim's restaurant. That was when we weren't officially commercial, and he took a chance and paired our sool with the food. Because of that experience, I wanted to make sure that we utilize our space to give opportunity to other chefs and creators. That was one big motivating factor. Another important aspect of our popups is showcasing, of course, talented chefs, but also how our sool pairs so well with so many different styles and cuisines. The versatility of the sool and the case that we make for it is something that I'm really proud of. The popup series that we've been doing for the last year and a half is our primary way of showcasing that. Of course, we have incredible accounts, restaurants and bars that carry our products and apply it in different ways, but being able to do it in house with someone that's up and coming, someone who has ambitions that are similar to our own when we first started, that's really special.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Do you have a dream of a chef or artisan that you'd love to have come in the space and do a pop-up tasting menu? We're huge manifesters on the podcast.
Alice Jun:
I mentioned that my favorite pairing with Takju 16 is Northern Thai food. I hope that we can do a popup in the tasting room with Ugly Baby this year.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yes.
Alice Jun:
On a more broader global scale. I'm a big fan of Paik Jong-won. He is like the Anthony Bourdain of Korea and has an incredible show on Netflix called Paik's Spirit, which is all about food actually.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Okay, cool.
Alice Jun:
The editing is wild, and I hope they do a season two and they shoot at Hana.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow, okay. Amazing. I can't wait to see. Obviously we talked a little bit about your trips to Korea and how they were really great in letting you firm up what you want to do with the brand. How was it though traveling there and how did traveling there help connect with your Korean heritage and how did you feel like it helped you with your identity as a Korean American?
Alice Jun:
Yeah. I think growing up in California, people see everyone from California as generally progressive, and it's a very diverse state, but when you're from rural areas, it's not the case at all. I actually really struggled with my Korean identity, rejected it at times, and it wasn't until moving to New York that I started to become comfortable. Sool and pursuing sool and having it be mine, it gave me confidence. I was proud to be Korean because of it. When I went to Korea, it also was a thing that because as a Korean American to Koreans you're the outsider. Sool was still a tool for me to then connect in that reverse way in Korea as well, because I was so interested and familiar with traditional styles of sool I think I'm more welcomed there than I would've been if I was just not interested in the culture at all.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. How's your Korean now?
Alice Jun:
It's all right. I'm practicing.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Bit by bit.
Alice Jun:
Yeah, it comes out better when I'm angry.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I totally identify with you as a third culture kid or a cross-cultural kid where it's like you grew up never being enough and at times, again, depending on your environment, it felt like you had to reject some part of your culture. How do you hope that your work with Hana Makgeolli inspires other cross culture people who are trying to build businesses that are rooted in their heritage of their ancestors or their families?
Alice Jun:
Yeah. I hope that Hana Makgeolli can work as a blueprint for them. That's not something that I had at the time, and there's still too few of us. Hana Makgeolli I hope it gives people hope that they too can also make investments and a discipline and a serious practice and a brand and everything that comes with having this kind of company. I hope that they can do it too. I got this question on a panel recently. They were like, "You're so passionate about Korean heritage cultural products. Why don't you make other heritage products from all over the world?" I said, "I think I'd rather have people from those cultures make their own heritage products, and I would never dare to do that for myself because it's really important that we claim things as our own and make sure that it stays that way." That's not a case against diversity, obviously.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Authenticity.
Alice Jun:
Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. I'm curious to hear how you think about Hana Makgeolli in this Korean food and wine landscape. I think we've seen this incredible renaissance for Korean food in America. We have Eric Kim with Korean American and his incredible, I feel like he's the reason Gochujang is a pantry staple in my fridge. Korean food has now just become part and parcel of American culture in such a beautiful and refreshing way. It's not just Korean barbecue, it's all these other things. How do you hope to see Hana in this Korean food landscape?
Alice Jun:
For Hana Makgeolli I hope we get to continue to lead the movement that is sool and the integration of it into our everyday lives. In our last three years, I think we've proven that makgeolli can be drunk on any occasion and paired with any food. It doesn't even have to be drunk normally like a wine. It can be cocktailed with, it can be incorporated into dishes and desserts. There is so much versatility to it and endless potential when it comes to adoption in the US market. Because the way Hana talks about our products and our methodologies, it is very educational and I think has been and will continue to be a very refreshing contributor to the overall discourse within F&B when it comes to any kind of alcoholic products as well.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Are there any dream people that you'd love to try Hana Makgeolli?
Alice Jun:
Steven Yeun.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Korean American actor.
Alice Jun:
Yes. I've been a fan of Steven Yeun since “The Walking Dead” days.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh gee, nice.
Alice Jun:
I'd go crazy if he came to the tasting room. My team is equally obsessed with Sandra Oh.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Another Korean mother.
Alice Jun:
These people, if we don't view them as celebrities, but as people, these people have deep connections to products like makgeolli because of their culture and their backgrounds. Outside of the fantasy of it all I hope that by sharing makgeolli with people like them, could also give makgeolli a bigger platform.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What do you think the future is for small beverage brands and how do you hope that Hana plays a role in this? Because I feel like we're in such a beautiful time where there's so many small businesses that are popping up, rooted in heritage, rooted in health, rooted in community.
Alice Jun:
For small businesses in the future, especially small businesses that are like ours that represent some kind of heritage product, I think it's time to make big money moves.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Love.
Alice Jun:
I think it's time to invest in some vertical integration, be able to have your hands in the manufacturing of your own products, making the necessary investments to do so and the R&D to do so better and leveling it up. It's of course really important to share an authentic and genuine and heartfelt story, but I think to be able to pierce through how saturated the market is these days, you need to show a different level of commitment. Big money move is my way of saying, "Hey, it's time to dive deep and gain mastery of your craft."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow. Alice, thank you so much for joining us, and I can't wait to make makgeolli part of my dinner routine or night out with friends or just drink in the park.
Alice Jun:
Thank you so much for having me, Abena.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, of course. If we want to continue to support you, where are the best places to find you?
Alice Jun:
You can of course visit us in the tasting room in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. We're open Thursday through Sundays. We also provide more intimate tours and tastings at the brewery if you'd like to join us for one of those. Other than that, you can try our products in about 270, close to 300 retail stores, restaurants, and bars in New York, California, Illinois and more.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing. Thanks so much.
Alice Jun:
Thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Before we go, our guest is going to leave a voicemail just talking to themselves 10 years from now. You have reached The Future Of Food Is You mailbox. Please leave your message after the beep.
Alice Jun:
Alice, wake up. You are living your dream and knowing you, you're probably not fully appreciating it. I am proud of you. By this point, Hana Makgeolli has become a household name and you have taken big strides to establish the sool category in a lasting and global way. More people appreciate and understand the true beauty and complexity of sool and are choosing to support traditional producers. Because of our work, the Hana team is stronger than ever, and together it continues to feel like there's an endless potential for growth and opportunity to reach for. You finally created what you yourself needed back in the day. A global coalition of sool producers that share resources, fund research and development, advocate for regulatory recognition and changes and support each other's launches and new releases. This is the path forward and you've helped forge it. I hope within this that you have found more time for yourself, that you're actively choosing peace and feel a bit more grounded. Remember the community that supported you and that you give to is all that anyone really has.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's it for today's show. I would love for you to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you listen to our show. Thank you to Kerrygold for supporting our show. The Future Of Food Is You is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast network. Thanks to the team at CityVox Studios, executive producers, Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, associate producer Jenna Sadhu, and editorial assistant Londyn Crenshaw. Catch you on the future flip.