The reality of country wine
Whether it was during his years in Saigon, or when he returned to live in a coconut garden in Ben Tre, every time guests came, writer Trang The Hy always placed two bottles of wine on the table, one bottle he called five-liter wine, the other a six-liter bottle. Both were cooked by an acquaintance in Huu Dinh area, his hometown. It's called the five-liter type because each batch of 10 kg of brown sticky rice (glutinous rice without the bran removed) only boils for five liters. The same goes for the six-liter. Guests who need to drink slowly and enjoy sipping should choose the five-liter type. Young people who drink quickly, drink a lot, and like to be noisy should choose the six-liter type.
Ben Tre has a famous wine, Phu Le wine, only 40 km from Mr. Trang The Hy's place. Bottled Phu Le wine is still sold everywhere in town, but it is fake wine. If you want to get a real bottle of Phu Le, you have to go down to the furnace in Phu Le village. Because he did not have the conditions to regularly cross those 40 kilometers, the writer felt secure with his own wine. One time, a writer friend came to visit and brought him a delicious bottle of Cognac, but after a long party, the Cognac bottle was only partially empty, while the owner's anonymous bottles of wine were completely empty. Sitting around the table that day were friendly people, all old drinkers, so it's hard to say that the choice of wine was social and polite.
Let's talk about a few things: wherever we go in our country, there is good country wine; but they only cluster around in a narrow area; And, with famous wine names such as Van Village, Bau Da, Go Den, Phu Le… fake wine is everywhere, displayed along the highway and even in supermarkets and restaurants, making it even more difficult to find real wine from these names.
Imagine a bottle of national wine
Our recent culinary survey still owes a debt to the Northwest and Viet Bac regions. It is said that up there there is San Lun wine of the Mong people, which is also very delicious, a distilled wine like Mau Son wine of the Dao people in Lang Son. Perhaps these are special cases in the "making" of wine by mountain people. Because most ethnic groups from the South to the North commonly make gin wine, typically can wine of the Central Highlands ethnic groups and the Muong people in Viet Bac. The process of making wine is from fermenting cereal grains with herbs that create yeast. When drinking, adding water will create wine. Let's talk briefly to see that the wine process does not have a chance to make a bottle of national wine.
A bottle of delicious pure Vietnamese wine on the banquet table can only be a bottle of wine distilled from sticky rice.
According to our subjective assessment through direct surveys of famous wine producing regions from North to South such as Mau Son, Van Village, Tho Ha, Tanh Xa, Nga Son, Kim Long, Chuon Village, Da Bac, Bong Son, Bau Da, Go Den, Phu Le, Xuan Thanh, Tan Loc… and many delicious but not yet famous wines, we see that sticky rice is not completely the same due to the variety, soil, and weather of each region. The next factor is the yeast card. The third equally important factor is water source. The rest is a lifelong experience. For example, the incubation time for a batch of Bau Da wine before cooking in summer and winter is up to three days different. Fire also plays a very important part. Those hereditary experiences still live among the people.
The names of alcoholic beverages that have been passed down among the people are indeed names that cannot be passed down. Through the survey, our group temporarily agreed that there are three wines ranked at the top, which are Van Village (Van Ha commune, Viet Yen district, Bac Giang province), Bau Da (Cu Lam village, An Loc commune, An Nhon district, Binh Dinh province) and Phu Le (Phu Loi hamlet, Phu Le commune, Ba Tri district, Ben Tre). I would also like to add that in the South, there is a wine more famous than Phu Le, which is Go Den, in Long An province. In fact, Go Den is not a village but an entire area with 5 communes, 3 communes in Ben Luc district, 2 communes in Can Giuoc district. Now Go Den is still a good wine destination, but it tends to be plural so the quality is no longer as unique as Phu Le.
To get a bottle of national wine
If Van Village Wine is compact and deep according to literary wings, Bau Da wine is strong and broad according to martial arts wings, while Phu Le is both rich and airy and generous. Put a bottle of Van Village on a party welcoming a politician or a cultural figure; a bottle of Bau Da for a general, a character with strong temperament; and bottles of Phu Le in crowded, generous parties, I think it will be a beautiful impression for both guests and hosts.
Nowadays, real wine makers are struggling because of fake wine and that is the leading risk of the disappearance of famous wine villages. The state should take over the exclusive right to the brand and label of these wines and hand it over to the craft village's association, so that the true artisans of the craft village will control each other's quality with a convention and trust. The Go Den wine region restoration project of Long An can be a good reference. Breweries in traditional wine villages all say that the longer the wine distilled from sticky rice is stored, the better it tastes. Shikar Company, the owner of bottled Kim Long wine (Hai Lang, Quang Tri), is applying the method of storing wine in the cellar to make delicious wine based on age. As for the above traditional wines to "stand" on the diplomatic table, it is necessary to have the participation of scientists who can convince those responsible for protecting the health of the "big guys". In addition, it is necessary to have a wine set that carries the "spirit" of each type of wine above, which is not beyond the reach of our country's ceramic and glass technologists.