My hometown is located next to the romantic Cau River. Fresh water flows underground along with a thousand-year-old family secret to distill a famous product: Van Village Wine – yellow-flower glutinous rice wine.
My hometown's wine has long been famous thanks to the aroma of yellow-flower glutinous rice – delicious sticky rice, the essence of the earth, sky, and fields. Whenever there is a death anniversary at home or when Tet comes or Spring comes, my mother often cooks a pot of delicious sticky rice wine to treat guests. A basket of sticky rice mixed with fermentation starter is covered. When the wine ferments, a sweet aroma emits, making you feel intoxicated by the smell. After 72 hours of soaking, it is boiled to produce genuine sticky rice wine. The secret of Van Village's wine is still kept secret by the villagers.
Friends from the street still enjoy drinking in the open air. A sedge mat was spread out in the middle of the yard, five or seven sons sat around it. Snacks are sometimes just a plate of boiled chicken, a plate of pickled onions, a plate of roasted peanuts or a few green guavas and starfruits with whole leaves just picked from the garden. The yeast of wine sublimates in the yeast of heaven and earth, making village and street stories even more exciting. The poet's friend, drunk and excited, read a few sentences:
Countryside wine has a fragrant aroma of sticky rice
I click my lips in gratitude to heaven and earth
The intoxicating yeast torments the opening of spring
There are green chung cakes with sticky rice on the back
Fatty meat, pickled onions, red couplets rushed up
Well, working far away all year round, only on Tet do friends and brothers have the opportunity to gather, so everyone wants to drink their hearts out for the sake of love. And when drunk, good wishes, deep joys and sorrows are spread between the wine tray. That's when I realized that just the clink of a glass can be very emotional. Nowadays, people in my hometown have switched to making cassava wine, simply because of its cheap price. Wondering a lot about the quintessence of the craft village, will there ever be a future? Looking at the couplet engraved on the welcome gate of Van Village: "The beautiful fragrance and wine of the North Sea / Victory like the Moon dawns in the South", my heart felt sad. Few people know that jars of handmade sticky rice wine, priced at only 10,000-15,000 VND per liter, were famous for a while and are still groping for a way.
Tran Thanh Vinh