Introducing yuzu, a new citrus to New Zealand taste buds

Saturday, 24 May 2025

Wellington orchardist Neville Chun can’t grow yuzu fast enough to keep up with New Zealanders' growing appetite. Sarah Lang discovers it took a lot of determination and some thick gloves to bring the citrus fruit to the nation.

If you bite into a yuzu fruit like you might an orange or a mandarin, you’ll be surprised – and perhaps taken aback – by the taste. Tangy, tart and bitter, the citrus fruit is a sort of hybrid of lime, lemon and grapefruit. Thought to be first grown in the highlands of ancient China, the fruit is widely used in China, Japan and Korea. In 1914, on an expedition for the US Department of Agriculture, botanist Frank Nicholas Meyer found a yuzu tree in China – and brought seeds to the US.

Yuzu has since made its way here courtesy of Neville Chun. A third-generation Chinese New Zealander, the horticulturalist was the country’s first commercial yuzu grower, and is by far the biggest (there are now two other, smaller operations).

Chun often drives from his Lower Hutt home to his one-hectare yuzu orchard in Levin, with its 400 trees. Pīwakawaka (fantails) flit from tree to tree, keener to land on the branches than on the inhospitable fruit.

The fruit’s dimples make it look squashed. “It looks like a large, lumpy yellow mandarin. But it does look beautiful on the trees. When the sun shines through the trees, it lights up the yuzu like glowing orbs.”

The trees are shaped like vases, with the lower branches pruned or removed so you can safely get under them to pick the fruit. To do so, Chun puts on protective gloves that stretch all the way up his arms, with nylon sleeves over that.

“Yuzu have huge aggressive thorns: so long and sharp that the tip will go through a leather glove and it’ll swell up and I just slowly work its way out with tweezers, and it’ll hurt for weeks.” He shows me some of the small scars on his arm. Sometimes he wears kneecap covers so that the thorns can’t prick him when he picks, weeds or prunes. Naturally, he doesn’t leave the cuttings or trimmings on the ground.

Chun used to drive up for around three days a week, ‘glamping’ in a tiny glasshouse, but now an employee does much of the orchard maintenance. Chun is still there often. He also grows trees for sale in his 1500m² backyard in Lower Hutt – including finger limes, chestnuts and kumquats.

He’d never heard of yuzu until he met his late wife, Junko, who passed away in 2022. She’d brought a packet of dried-up yuzu seed from Japan when she moved to New Zealand as a teenager. “She said ‘please grow this’ and I said ‘what is it?’.”

Chun tried to use the seeds to grow yuzu trees. It didn’t work. Then working in a family garden-centre business, he tried to track down some yuzu trees. Finally he found a nursery grower that had a few. “He said ‘they’re bloody terrible trees, do you want them? I’ll give them to you real cheap’.”

“I thought, ‘shall we grow it? Or is that a really bad business plan?’ Hardly anyone in New Zealand knows what the fruit is!” They decided to go for it – and planted their first 100 trees in 2006. “A week later they were gone, eaten by rabbits. I couldn’t believe it.” They replanted. “We had to put physical barriers around each tree, but now that the trees are established they don’t get that predation.”

Chun also grows and sells ume: a salty-tasting, plum-like ‘Japanese apricot’. “It’s a good ingredient for brewers and distillers. With green ume you make umeshu, a liquor. With ripe ume, you make a condiment which is the whole fruit but preserved with salt, called umeboshi.”

“With yuzu and ume, you pick some of the fruit when it’s unripe and it’s got a particular flavour and use.” Green yuzu is selectively harvested in April. “It’s very intense in flavour – very peppery, very pungent. With green yuzu peel you can make a pungent paste condiment called yuzu koshō.” It’s a bit like wasabi.

The main yuzu harvest season begins mid-May and lasts through to June, sometimes July depending on weather, says Chun. “But we’ve usually sold out by the end of June.”

Demand outstrips supply. “Kiwis are hungry for new things and people are looking for unique ingredients. They want to be excited by them. They want to know about and try something new and different.”

New Zealand chefs are increasingly using yuzu as an ingredient. “Really clever chefs say ‘yuzu, what can I do with it?’. Their imagination flows and they make some brilliant stuff out of it, with their own take on the fruit. They go for it.”

Chun and I follow a basket of yuzus to the kitchen of Helen Turnbull, who runs Paraparaumu restaurant 50-50.

Turnbull has worked at traditional and Michelin-starred restaurants around the world, including for five years in Japan where yuzu is very popular. Now she incorporates yuzu into her fine-dining set menu of nine courses, which changes every month.

She uses yuzu for a bitter tang that balances out other ingredients. “It’s great to have a supplier so close by, and it’s a unique flavour that’s fun to play with.” Yuzu has lots of pips and not much juice, so she uses mainly yuzu zest.

We watch her prepare three dishes in which yuzu is a hero ingredient. One dish is shitake mushroom sushi with a nasturtium mustard sauce, a yuzu puree, pickled yuzu on top and feijoa yuzu kosho (yuzu kosho is a pasty Japanese condiment made from fresh chillis, then fermented with salt alongside zest and juice from yuzu). “The dish started with yuzu, rather having yuzu added to a dish. I wanted to show all of it, and use it in different ways.”

Her second dish is pan-fried blue cod with pickled pumpkin and puréed pumpkin, using yuzu kosho and an emulsion made from yuzu-flavoured olive oil. Using sugared yuzu and salted yuzu, she makes yuzu purée – and its bitterness pairs well with the pumpkin and blue cod. Pickled yuzu on top is shaped like little hats. “The cod makes space for the yuzu flavour to come through.” In each dish, yuzu pops in your mouth in different ways – some subtle, others stronger.

In her restaurant, many people who taste dishes featuring yuzu have never heard of it. “It’s fun to show them a yuzu. I’ll bring one over and make a small indent so they can smell the zest. Turnbull sends recipes to guests and other chefs, if they want.

“We’re only adolescent in the development of New Zealand cuisine. We’ve shucked off the Brit-inherited meat and three vege. People like a change. It’s an exciting time to be part of the New Zealand food scene.”

As she cooks, Chun looks on then tastes the dishes, interested in how the yuzu flavour will emerge. “I’ve always been a foodie so it’s interesting to learn more about food by interacting with my customers from around the country.” The social element is a nice balance with solitary work with the fruit.

Chun has contracted some other orchards to grow yuzu for him, and further expansion is likely. “I’m happy with where we’re at, but I’m not finished yet. I just love bringing yuzu to New Zealanders.”