Served straight and chilled or in cocktails, the distinctive green bottles of Korea’s national tipple are becoming a familiar sight on UK supermarket shelves

Thanks to Reddit (a phrase I’ve broken the glass on more times than I’d care to admit), I’m aware that Lidl now sells soju. That makes three out of the big six selling Korea’s national drink, which is solid proof that supermarket buyers now feel that soju is popular enough to shift plenty of the stuff.

But I think it’s deserving of even more attention than that. Soju, meaning “burned liquor”, is a clear, rice-based distilled liquor that dates back to the Three Kingdoms period in ancient Korean history. It’s traditionally made from rice fermented with nuruk, a Korean grain-based starter but, due to staple food shortages, sweet potato and tapioca were later introduced to strengthen the alcohol.