bokbunja

The Chinese characters 覆盆子 appear in the Shennong Bencao Jing, the foundational Chinese pharmacopoeia compiled in written form around the first or second century CE. They name the fruit of Rubus chingii, the Chinese raspberry. The characters mean, literally, overturn-basin-seed: 覆 (to cover or overturn), 盆 (a basin or vessel), and 子 (seed, child, or small thing). The pharmacopoeia credited the berry with strengthening the kidneys and the reproductive system, and the folk explanation followed naturally: the berries gave a man such vigor that he urinated with enough force to overturn a chamber pot.

Rubus coreanus, the Korean black raspberry, is a different species from the Chinese Rubus chingii, but Korean herbalists applied the same characters and the same medical category when they encountered the native berry. The Korean black raspberry ripens from June to July, turning a deep purple-black, and grows wild in mountainous regions throughout the peninsula. By the Goryeo period, Korean medical texts were citing it under the Chinese name 覆盆子, and the berry was included in official inventories of tributary medicinal goods. The Sino-Korean pronunciation became bokbunja, following the established system of character borrowing.

The wine made from bokbunja, called bokbunja-ju, was not widely commercialized until the 1980s and 1990s, when South Korean agricultural policy encouraged regional specialty products. The Gochang district in North Jeolla Province became the primary production zone and received a government geographical indication designation. The wine is a deep ruby-purple, mildly sweet, and between 15 and 19 percent alcohol. It is sold in bottles shaped to suggest a traditional onggi ceramic jar, and marketed with language drawn directly from the original pharmacopoeia.

The berry itself was used long before the wine. In Joseon-era household medicine, bokbunja was dried and powdered, steeped in grain alcohol, or boiled with other herbs for tonics given to men suffering from fatigue or reproductive weakness. The Chinese medical category 補腎 (reinforcing the kidneys) covered a wide range of conditions that Korean practitioners mapped onto the local berry without questioning whether the species matched. The name carried its authority from China, and the berry carried the name.