Strong Phuc My rice wine

(Baonghean) - The wine-making profession in Hung Chau commune (Hung Nguyen) was recognized as a craft village by the Provincial People's Committee in 2007. Despite certain ups and downs, wine-making is still one of the professions that helps farmers here escape poverty and get rich...

The village still retains the charm and simplicity of a rural village in the Nghe An plain with flat terrain, the village roads hugging the residential areas along the fertile rice fields. The ancient village name Phuc Le originated in 1593 under the early Le Dynasty, and was changed to Phuc My during the reign of Tu Duc under the Nguyen Dynasty. Many people still know the name of the village, but no one knows exactly when the Phuc My wine-making profession began.

Distillation of alcohol in Phuc My.

The Phuc My wine-making village project records that the wine-making profession was introduced to the village in 1930, but who was the first person to bring the steamer home to distill the yeast for their descendants to use as the core profession for the villagers to get rich? If you ask the Ly, Le, Nguyen families... everyone will shake their heads, no matter which family in the village has built a beautiful and solemn church, and on holidays and New Year's Day they all offer the village wine distilled from the strong wood firewood, very carefully and respectfully to show gratitude to their ancestors. After all, nearly a hundred years of strong wine flavor has spread throughout the North and South, thousands and tens of thousands of liters since becoming a craft village, so why is the name still so humble? I was surprised when the village chief - Mr. Le Xuan Cuc said: There are wine-making villages in other places whose products have labels and labels that sell well on the market, but in fact, a part of them are from Phuc My wine. Without labels or brands, the people of Phuc My craft village accept to sell imported wine on the market at prices that are sometimes 5 times lower than others. This means that about 100 households in Phuc My - Hung Chau are now sticking to the traditional wine making profession during the peak season, producing about 3,000 liters of wine a day, and selling wine at wholesale prices has lost about 15 million VND. So in a month, the people of Phuc My craft village have lost about 450 million VND. Making wine, fermenting rice, distilling, and running around the market, but selling at such low prices, how can they get rich and maintain their profession?

That is, wine making must go hand in hand with animal husbandry. At its peak, many households in Phuc My wine making earned a net profit of over 100 million VND/year thanks to using by-products (wheat) to raise pigs. Now, the household that makes the most wine in Hung Chau is Mr. Nguyen Huu Tho, who cooks 100 kg of sticky rice/day during the peak season, regularly fattening 30 pigs in a pen. When Vice Chairman of the commune Le Khanh Quang led me to Mr. Tho's house, I learned that this was in My Du village, but his mother, a native of Phuc My, married here to keep the profession. Another thing to know is that the wine making profession has spread beyond Phuc My village, but whoever makes wine in Hung Chau also "eats" into the reputation of the craft village. The house is large and tiled on all sides because the wine making profession is terribly damp and moldy. The brick yard is spacious but is full of round packages of sticky rice purchased to prepare for the "distillation campaign" during the beer season. Mr. Tho happily said: “I still have a full barn of sticky rice at the back of the house, some of it is still kept at my mother-in-law’s house, the rest I paid for in advance, when the harvest season comes, they will bring it over. Every year I use more than ten tons of sticky rice to make wine, no matter how much I store, there is never any left. Sometimes I brew up to 60 big buckets of rice wine, I have to number each bucket to cook it at the right time!”

Tho's father was a pre-revolutionary cadre, now 92 years old, vaguely remembers that before the August Revolution, the French came to the village to catch smuggled alcohol. All the alcohol that the people of Phuc My put in jars to brew under the floor, and all the alcohol in the pond was confiscated. But then, no one wanted to give up the profession, just cook secretly, cook secretly, put it in rubber bags, wrap it around their bodies, carry it with them as a vegetable basket, and go to the countryside markets to sell. Who thought about reputation or brand? But at that time, when customers saw the faces of the people of Phuc My, they recognized the people of the wine village, and believed in good wine because they trusted people. However, the famine of At Dau (1945) also caused almost everyone to abandon the profession, only a few middle-class farmers and village chiefs still had rice to brew alcohol and the strength to drink. After the revolution, and then the new cooperatives, many families searched for jars and places to continue the traditional wine-making profession. But it was also fickle, because after fighting the French, we fought the Americans. There was a period when we banned it because rice had to be saved for the front lines to fight the enemy. The pots for cooking alcohol were left lying around. Gradually, the copper pot for cooking alcohol that our people used to call the "turtle" pot disappeared because it was round with a waist and a waist, looking like a turtle.

Let's talk a little about the wine-making pot, because it is also associated with the tradition of the profession. In the past, the "ba ba" copper pot was considered one of the valuable items of poor farmers. In Phuc My village, it was used to make wine, but the wine still had a lingering smell of copper. Later, it was replaced by wooden pots and now aluminum pots. Of those three types of pots, the pot made of Doi wood is the best for making wine, it can bring Phuc My wine to the top level, but it is inconvenient because in the hot season, after cooking, you have to throw it in the pond to soak until the wood cracks are fully expanded. But even with such disadvantages, it can still be used if it produces a "treasure of wine", but it is expensive, now to make a pot like that costs millions of dong, and the wine does not sell for much, so no one thinks about making a wooden pot to make wine.

Well, not yet a "treasure wine" of the level of a product offered to the king, Phuc My wine has been regularly ordered by customers in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi by hundreds of liters, just call and the villagers will send a passenger car to the place. Mr. Tho specializes in getting wine with 50 "degrees" according to the customer's needs, which means only taking the "first water". His wife quickly measured out a bottle, Mr. Tho dropped a little on the table and lit a match, immediately erupting into a blue flame. However, it is smooth to drink and fragrant with the quintessence of the sticky rice of the countryside. "The best wine, I can only sell for 35 thousand VND per liter, which is cheap, if we do not use the lees to raise pigs, the people of Phuc My village will no longer be able to make commercial wine. Therefore, if we want to keep the wine-making profession, we must definitely raise pigs" - Mr. Tho said.

The Phuc My wine-making village space includes hamlets 3 and 4, Hung Chau commune. Along with the Dong Nhat - Hung Chau peanut candy and rice paper village next door, the Phuc My craft village has been invested by the State in building rural roads with a total budget of more than 5 billion VND for the two villages, so now the village roads are solidified, spacious and very spacious. But the impression is that modern high-rise buildings have sprung up, the size of villas, built in a rustic style but all costing from five to seven hundred million to billions of VND. The Party Secretary of hamlet 3, Le Van Voi, led me to visit the craft village and said: "You have come back this season, it is the wrong season for wine-making. Because this profession is also very fickle, it is okay when it is hot and windy, but if it is humid, the pot of wine is ruined. Those who cook less have to stop their job, those who cook more have to try to keep customers. The main season is from September this year to April next year." It was extremely busy during the main wine-making season. Phuc My village was always humming with the milling machines grinding sticky rice to make wine. From early evening, every household had been cooking and fermenting rice wine. Late at night, they slept for a few hours and then woke up at 3am, the whole village was red-lighted, bustling, the night sky was filled with the strong scent of sticky rice. In the morning, on the alleys and the Ta Lam dike, women were rushing through the mist carrying wine to sell.

Party cell secretary Le Van Voi walked down the shiny steps of the new two-story house that still smelled of paint, probably alerting the host to come out to receive guests. The fragrant smell of wine wafted from the kitchen to the spacious living room. The hostess, tying her hair tie, quickly wiped her sweat and said enthusiastically: “This house is partly funded by my children’s contributions. But I’ll tell you the truth, if it weren’t for the hot and humid season, I wouldn’t need them to contribute any money. That’s because I’m diligent in importing wine directly from the source, so I can “get” a few more prices. Besides, of course I have to raise pigs! I have 20 pigs in my pen now, and they grow up very quickly when they eat wine lees, and the same goes for raising chickens and ducks! If you go to the Vinh Ga area, just ask for “Wine Phuong” in any shop, and everyone will know me. My wine is even packaged in hundreds of liters at a time, sent to my family to consume in the South...”. Oh, what a “cheating” nickname! But then tomorrow, if Phuc My wine village is recognized for its product brand, it will not forget people like Ms. Phuong's family. In the time of illegal alcohol, the Westerners forced the villagers to sell alcohol and believe in Phuc My wine just by looking at the faces of the people. Now, competing with many other wine-making villages, Ms. Phuong's reputation has contributed to honoring the traditional craft of the village.

Since it is a wine-making village, the more you brew, the better, but the more you brew, the more pigs you raise. What about the village environment? Party cell secretary Voi said: “Journalists, have you been around the village, do you smell the “smell” of pigs and chickens? Every house cleans its pens regularly, and wastes water into the fields. The livestock manure is carefully composted to fertilize the fields. I guarantee that the fields of the people of Phuc My village are always greener and more productive than those in the area. It is not too much to say that the glutinous rice grains used to make wine look bigger than the rice grains!”

So the wine making profession has brought some benefits. Phuc My wine making village has filed to register the trademark "Phuc My - Hung Chau sticky rice wine". In the future, when it is established in the market, Phuc My wine will be sold at the right price according to its quality. If we can bring the "old" yellow flowered sticky rice to grow in the village fields to invest in cooking according to the technology of Van village outside Kinh Bac, then surely Phuc My craft village will also have the right to dream of being the destination of a hundred-year-old traditional wine making village with a strong flavor on the tourist road along Lam river. I dare to contribute my words to Party Secretary Le Van Voi like that, also because of the excitement after a small cup of wine just brewed, all the feelings fully feel a quintessential flavor of Nghe An village rice grains, which is no less unique!

Article and photos:Sam Temple