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A Brief History of Persimmon Brandy
All fruit will ferment. Expose the sugars of fruit to the air and naturally occurring yeasts will start to eat those sugars to produce alcohol. Our ancestors figured this out almost 10,000 years ago and started making fruit wine. As alcohol distillation was developed in the 11th century AD, fruit wine quickly evolved into fruit brandy.
Persimmon Brandy is made all over the world, but has never become a widespread product. It did have have a period of more widespread production in the American colonies where some of the earliest recorded persimmon brandy was produced.
Most persimmons you encounter today are Oriental Persimmons (Diospyros Kaki) which were first cultivated in China over 2,000 years ago and came to the United States in the 1800’s. However, there are over 700 species of persimmon and the New World has its own species of persimmon. Most relevant to today’s discussion is Diospyros Virginiana, which grows throughout the southeastern United States and was an important crop for both the Native Americans and the European Colonists.
Early American Persimmon Brandy
Throughout the 1700’s a persimmon beer was made by first creating a persimmon bread and then soaking it in water and letting it ferment. References to it go as far back as a 1705 Virginia publication and there are widespread descriptions of persimmon beer production from the early 1700s through the late 1800’s.
Persimmon wine can also be produced by simply juicing the persimmon and letting it ferment without first baking a persimmon bread. It appears that persimmon wine was less common than persimmon beer though.
Shortly before the American revolution there started to be widespread production of persimmon brandy alongside apple and peach brandy. Both George Washington and George Mason have discussions of persimmon brandy on their plantations alongside apple brandy and peach brandy. Ultimately, persimmon brandy lost out to apple brandy in the Americas for economic reasons. Persimmon brandy did have a brief resurgence during the civil war, likely because persimmons were more prevalent in the deep south than apples.
Persimmon Brandy Today
While persimmon brandy is distilled throughout the world it is uncommon and we found just a few example available from Georgia, Slovenia, Portugal, Japan, and Israel. We found no examples of commercially produced persimmon brandy in the United States but our search was not exhaustive. The producers who listed their type of persimmon all seemed to be using Oriental (Kaki species) persimmons like we are.
We were surprised to see how few persimmon brandies there are in the world and would love to find an American persimmon brandy. If you know of one please let us know. Until then, we are happy to share our persimmon brandy with you and hopefully inspire others to bring back this traditional American distillate.
References
2005 paper on uses of Diospyros Virginiana in the 16th-19th centuries
A discussion of if indigenous populations fermented persimmons