Schisandra
A red berry whose Chinese and Korean names both mean five-flavour fruit, because it is genuinely sour, sweet, bitter, pungent and salty at once. Korean omija-cha is cold-brewed rather than steeped, and the resulting drink is a startling pink.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Schisandra chinensis
- Family
- Schisandraceae
- Part used
- Fruit
- Origin
- Northern China, the Russian Far East, Korea and Japan
- Drunk in
- Mungyeong, Gangwon, Jilin, Primorye
Character
Sour first, then bitter and resinous, with a genuinely saline finish. It is one of the few things in the catalogue that is difficult to describe with a single word, which is what the name records.
Notes: cranberry, pine, salt
History
Gathered from forest vines across the northeast Asian temperate forest and cultivated in Korea, where Mungyeong is the best-known producing district. The five-flavour name is old and is descriptive rather than symbolic — the fruit really does present that range.
How it is drunk
Omija-cha is made in Korean households by steeping the berries in cold water or layering them with sugar for months, and served chilled in summer. It is also used in hwachae and in Korean confectionery, and the colour is a large part of its appeal.
Production
Berries are picked ripe in autumn and dried or preserved in sugar. Cold water is the traditional extraction because heat pulls out a harsh bitterness that cold does not, which is unusual among dried fruits.
Preparation
Cold infusion · Infusion
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 15–20 °C · 720 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
What gets confused
Cold and hot extractions are different drinks and the tradition uses cold. Hot-brewed schisandra is harsh and is not what omija-cha tastes like.
Common mistakes
- Brewing it hot. Twelve hours in cold water is the preparation, and it is the whole difference.
Related botanicals
- Hawthorn berry — Sour northeast Asian berries with a resinous tail, both extracted better cold than hot.
Comparisons
- Schisandra vs hawthorn — Two sour northeast Asian berries with a resinous tail. Schisandra is cold-brewed for twelve hours and hawthorn is simmered, and the difference in method is the difference in the drink.
- Goji berry vs schisandra — Two northern Chinese berries drunk from a flask and a jar respectively, one mild and sweet, the other the strangest thing in the catalogue.
Guides
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Schisandra chinensis (Turcz.) Baill. — GRIN-Global Taxonomy record— retrieved and read, not countersigned by a named human. That source covers naming and distribution only. Everything else on this page — history, culture, production, flavour, preparation and buying advice — is TeaHQ’s own synthesis with no external source behind it.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Schisandra is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.