I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for anything even remotely alliaceous. Okay, okay, that one is a bit rare. From time to time, though, we, at drinkingjapan.org, like to pull up something from the lexical dustbin. Alliaceous is defined by Wiktionary as “smelling or tasting of garlic or onion.” In this week’s entry I will focus on the former.
Well, what is garlic? Permit me to cite myself here.
Garlic is a member of the lily family. There are many kinds of garlic, but the most popular/common type is appropriately named “common garlic,” otherwise known as Allium sativum. Common garlic is pretty strong stuff. A much weaker variety, however, is elephant garlic. As its name suggests, it is very big, but it is also very mild.1
Some of our readers may suspect that I am about to introduce a garlic wine or a nihon-shu infused with the stinking rose. Nothing of the sort. At the February 2026 Gourmet Show held in Tokyo Big Sight. I met Sachiko Miyazaki, President of Shizenkyosei, an Okayama-based firm that I believe is well worth looking into. I sampled two of their products: Garlisco, a garlic sauce in a Tabasco-like bottle, and ゆずこしよう with garlic.
Garlisco is a sauce comprised of apple-cider vinegar, garlic, salt, and chili pepper. I found it to be both pungent and tart, simple ingredients that yield complex flavors. The ゆずこしよう with garlic was equally flavorful, but as one would expect from such a garnish, very spicy. The ingredients are as follows: garlic, salt, green chili pepper, yuzu peel, and vinegar.
For all of you Maillard fans out there, this company also markets black garlic.
1O’Connor, W., et al. Did You Know That…? (Tokyo: Sanshusha, 2004).
