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0:02 27,000 tons of yuzu are grown here in Japan every year compare that to here in the US where there are only a handful of yuzu farms growing a fraction of that the number of yuzu menu items in the US grew 33% between 2016 and 2021 and a French flavor company named Yuzu 2025's flavor of the year i think chefs really love how different it is from a regular lemon or a lime or an orange with this kind of supply imbalance countries will typically strike an international trade deal but none of Japan's yuzu bounty will reach the US legally and because there's not much fresh yuzu grown in the US prices for the fruit have skyrocketed to around $20
0:50 a pound so if Japan has so much yuzu why can't it meet US demand and why is American yuzu so expensive i've been going to Japan a long time so I love you know the citrus robbie Cook is the executive chef of Coral and Macas in New York City i do a smoked salt with the yuzu juice on that right now winter time goes very well with a wild yellow tail so it's cooking it in a broth into the panzoo throughout his career he's been able to compare Japanese and domestic yuzu the ones from Japan have a little more sweetness and uh that orangey flavor compared to like lemony
1:35 flavor thing that's nice about what get from Japan is they're like really massive so you get much more service area you can peel your own skins freeze them and save for a later date right now the only legal way to experience fresh Japanese yuzu is by leaving the US here in Japan it's everywhere sorti Farms in Kochi Prefecture sells its fresh fruit for as little as 10 cents a pop in the past its yuzu has gone for over $3
2:28 52% of yuzu grown in Japan comes from the Kochi prefecture took over his family's 10acre citrus farm when he was 31 some of the yuzu trees here are more than 100 years old only a few fruits will be high enough quality to sell whole the most expensive form the rest will be juiced and the peels
3:16 used for essential oils senkoji Farm separates the yuzu intended for sale from the yuzu intended for juicing and sorts it by size and quality
4:03 for sending One blemish too many can disqualify a fruit from being sold whole japan is known for its luxury fruit which prioritizes a perfect aesthetic
4:50 above all else these premium pieces can be sold at a much higher price than the average offering to keep every fruit as pretty as possible Sashi and his team of four harvest by hand sashi says current technology doesn't take the Yuzu tre's huge thorns into account which can damage the fruit but he has hopes for a more automated future
5:43 about four out of Sorgji Farms 10 acres are dedicated to yuzu the fruit accounts for 40% of sales so it's important to keep it as healthy as possible but the question of why all this yuzu from Japan won't legally make it to the US can be answered in part by this imperfect green piece of fruit foreign but citrus drizza virus isn't the only threat to America's $3 billion citrus industry another infection citrus
6:29 greening disease was first detected in 2005 since then citrus production in Florida has plummeted 75% the disease is incurable once a tree is infected the only way to deal with it is to destroy it some markets like the European Union do allow use of imports from Japan under strict conditions that keep prices skyhigh one German sushi restaurant told Business Insider it purchased a case of 12 Japanese yuzu for €7 a piece the United States on the other hand does not allow any imports of freshing from Japan it might be touchy but you know okay I do believe some chefs are getting
7:15 from Japan records from the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service show only rare instances of smuggled yuzu the most recent being in 2016 but these records only tell us when smuggled yuzu was found to start the process of lifting the ban a trading partner would first have to request market access something the USDA told VI hasn't happened yet fresh yuzu seekers in the states must buy their fruit from one of the few US producers like the familyrun orchard Flavors by Boommy but local grown supply is limited making it expensive flavors by Boommy sells its yuzu for about $20 a pound compared to Sangji Farms $260
8:05 to the best of our knowledge we are the only growers of the yuzu or uh yuzu in general in the northeast nobody else does it it wasn't a choice to grow it in New Jersey we live here so there wasn't anywhere else to grow it since filming with BI Flavors by Boommy has moved its East Coast production to Pennsylvania sema Vivc and their daughter Simron are the family behind the business i'm 16 years old and sometimes one of them says "Oh the Yuzu are like our firstborns." Cuz they were around before I was so yes I have been surrounded by citrus pretty much my whole life the Mollik started growing yuzu 20 years ago but they had to work out some kinks before starting their business in 2017 we did put a couple of trees in the
8:53 ground outside they promptly died there was no information available 20 years ago when we first started working with the yuzu after tinkering around for a good decade we decided to go commercial and uh started working with Michelin star restaurants and have been doing so for the last 7 years now because the east coast climate isn't ideal for growing yuzu a greenhouse was pivotal to the company's success we can control the climate the feeding the beneficial insects the nutrition everything is controlled the greenhouse also adds a layer of protection from diseases and pests at the same time greenhouse space is Flavors Py Boom's biggest roadblock to increasing supply the access to good
9:42 greenhouse space is always a challenge cuz we can't expand without building green houses there's always this challenge to find the right land the right space to do all this scaling requires more labor from Simron the farm's resident grafting expert we have close to about I would say 3 to 4,000 trees since yuzu trees grown from seed take about 18 years to start producing fruit most new yuzu trees even in Japan are created through grafting the process involves attaching a budding yuzu stem to the root system of a different easier to grow citrus tree essentially the way a successful graph works is you want um the original tree to kind of absorb the graft and
10:27 then be able to uh grow that tree going further you don't want it to continue growing its own self per se this is a grafted yuzu tree um this part right here is the original plant and um this is where the graft was done right here this graft was done about 2 years ago and the tree is already producing fruit but it will still be a few years before it's fully grown these are definitely going to take a bunch of time somewhere between another 7 and 8 7 to 8 years to get somewhere along that size or maybe even along this size growing enough fruit is one thing but providing quality fruit is another fresh yuzu does not have a very long shelf
11:14 life couple of weeks at best when it's fully ripe because it tends to lose its juice content and tends to start becoming drier in nature so even if they could import it many chefs would still pay a premium for domestic yuzu especially when it's grown right next door i source locally like they tend to be much fresher here you know from travel time you know Vivec's just such a great guy like I'd rather support him and then always use his citrus which is great chef Robbie was one of the Mollik's very first customers even before they established their business i think Vivx is more comparable to Japan especially later in the season when they do get bigger and the more orange comes out to it robbie says frozen yuzu can't
12:01 compare with the flavor of the fresh fruit this we can buy all year round uh stays frozen similar flavor profile but I'd say less floral notes less freshness and like I said the the juice tends to be like really punchy but for Japan's yuzu farmers juicing is one of the only ways to access the US market yuzu juice can be imported from Japan because processing removes the pathogens diseases and pests that whole fruits carry at the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives Processing Center where Sen Koji Farms and other producers juice their yuzu 10 squeezing machines are kept behind glass
12:52 the skins are processed with a slicer yuzu cocktails sauces and seasonings might feel trendy in the US but the citrus goes back hundreds of years in Japan my favorite thing is the yuzu bath that um in Japan you can take on winter solstice the cultural significance that exists in Japan doesn't exist over here according
13:37 to Data Essentials menu adoption cycle Yuzu is in the adoption stage which is all about growing an ingredients fan base and the world zest for yuzu seems to be increasing mon a French flavor company has named Yuzu the 2025 flavor of the year mon has a history of predicting trends and influencing menus around the world and market segments like the yuzu based source panzoo and yuzu essential oil are expected to grow while it's safe to say it's a trend in the US flavors by bumi seems to be making a bet that yuzu is here to stay the Marliks are currently expanding their business to California we have close to about I would say another
14:24 10,000 trees in California of different varieties this way the company can shorten the travel time and provide even fresher fruit to chefs on the West Coast we would love to process at some point in the future right now we are just producing fresh fruit and supplying directly to our clients and that's it the citrus has a way to go before ubiquity outside of Japan but it seems to be a matter of time yuzu greenhouse shot 15 action one two three action take 20 one two three action
