Enjoy corn wine of Bac Ha

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Enjoy corn wine of Bac Ha

Bac Ha is famous not only for the special clothes of the girls in the mountainous area or the forest covered with the white plum flowers when spring comes, but also for the great ardent yeast of corn wine.

That wine is cooked from the only one material - corn planted on the milpa of H'mong people. May be because of the weather of the high land, corn kernels in this region are yellow, small, firm and nutritious. Mixing those corn kernels with a kind of special ferment produced from "hong my" (the grain which is similar to millet), H'mong people created a special wine which is unmistakable with other wines made in other areas in the North-Western region. People only need to open the stopper and taste and they could know whether it is corn wine of Bac Ha. When tasting the first drop of wine, that person will feel like burning and that feeling will spread to the whole body. But the ardent taste makes people feel passionate and impetuous but does not make them dizzy or have headache. Perhaps that is because of the original method that the local residents use to resist the cold of the winter.


	The wine extracted into cans and brought to the market by H'mong girls

Corn is planted everywhere, and wine is displayed throughout all markets. However, it is supposed that no kind of corn or wine in other places can be compared with those produced in Ban Pho. The wine of Ban Pho is torrid and very hot but it brings a sweet taste like the quintessence of the earth and firmament. People said that Ban Pho (a village of the ethnic group H'mong Hoa which stays at the distance of 4 kilometres from Bac Ha) has a precious source of water which is clean and pure. Thus, the residents could distill such delicious wine. About the corn, it is planted on the milpa and people take it home, boil it (but it should not be overdone), and then blend it with ferment made from "hong my". They keep it inside the pig-iron barrels in about one week. During these days, small fire is set under those barrels; the wine will be vaporized and the steam then will settle down into wine and pour out. Ten kilos of corn bring us three litres of wine. Time passing, this corn wine has changed many times because "hong my" plants are rarely grown in both Ban Pho and Bac Ha. The wine now is fermented more and also sold more to tourists. Maybe only some years later, the old flavour of the initial wine will only exist in the memory of excursionists who have once loved this land. Today, coming to Bac Ha or Sa Pa, travellers find it easy to buy the wine here, especially in Ban Pho. Drinking wine with some specialties of the land such as "men men" or "thang co" will bring interesting memories for the trips.

Source: simplevietnam.com

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