Around 10 minutes drive from Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), Nantou County (南投縣), Yuchih Township (魚池鄉) lies a quiet agricultural community where many of its 10,000 or so inhabitants use the nearby mountain springs to grow high-quality mushrooms that are mostly exported to Japan. Four years ago, a big-city family settled down in the small town and two years of trial and error later, a new item was added to the local export list: natural vinegar made from certified organic vegetables, fruits, grains and herbs.
"When we first traveled to the mushroom town 700m above sea level, the locals told us crops rarely need pesticides or fertilizers, just lots of water from the natural reservoir in the mountain. I immediately said to myself 'this is it' since the brewing business is all about location, sun, fresh air and water," said the creator of Luyin natural vinegar, Yang Lu-yin (楊綠茵), who just wound up the busiest season of the year sealing newly harvested plums into pottery jars to ferment for two years.
With a postgraduate degree in sociology from Chinghua University (清華大學), Yang dedicated the first half of her life to cultural and social work stretching from her pioneering participation in the Integrated Community Development Project (社區總體營造), saving the abandoned historical railway line from Sanyi (三義) to Houli (后里), to establishing Taiwan's first railway art village Stock 20 (20號倉庫) in Taichung.
Yet the busy lives of Yang and her husband had left the couple exhausted and their son sent to his grandparents' far away from home.
"At one point of my life, I started to ask myself what happiness truly means," said the mother of two.
The answer is Yuchih and the traditional art of making vinegar. She tried out ingredients offered by organic farmers, friends, neighbors or even strangers and chose to make the base vinegar out of brown rice, which is more nutritious and costlier to produce than the traditional constituent glutinous rice.
"My academic training comes in handy for my brewing adventures as I keep asking questions and am not afraid of experimenting. I have also learned a lot from my extensive reading of foreign clinical reports and medical studies on vinegar in the same way as I did my thesis and academic projects," Yang said.
The end result is over 40 kinds of novel vinegars lining Yang's shelves, 10 of which, including black bean, passion fruit, mulberry, pineapple, plum and old pine flavors, are produced on a large scale.
The first batch of Yang's natural vinegar came out in 2005, two years after the ingredients were sealed in jars. And during that time, the brewer divided her time studying vinegar, reading, having fun with her kids, exploring the countryside and visiting organic farmers much like "Marx's ideal man who reads poetry in the morning, ploughs in the afternoon and makes art at night," to use Yang Lu-yin's words.
Currently, the brewery can produce 50,000 to 100,000 bottles of vinegar a year, which are mostly exported to Singapore, Malaysia, US, Canada and Australia. The Yangs visit Singapore and Malaysia around five times a year to share their knowledge and tout the healthful benefits of their vinegars, which are certified by Singaporean authorities. Taiwan doesn't issue certification for vinegar since it is categorized as a food seasoning.
Rather than actively exploit new markets, the brewing family prefers to wait for buyers to stumble across its products. "All of our foreign distributors found us, not the other way around and I think it's better to sell my products abroad since I don't like the idea of taking part of the local, limited market away from other vinegar-makers," Yang said.
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