With their huge copper vats and open fires, backyard liquor makers have toiled for generations on Philippine coconut farms to distill their equivalent of Russian vodka.
Once considered a lowly peasant’s drink whose potency is said to put other liquors and spirits worldwide in the shade, the lambanog is the Philippine version of coconut arrack also made in Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
“Many have compared it to Russian vodka or English gin, but what sets our lambanog apart is that you don’t get a hangover,” distiller Isabelita Capistrano said.
The family-owned Capistrano Distillery in coconut-rich Tayabas is one of two leading Philippine makers of lambanog, which it sells to the country’s biggest supermarket chain.
“It is a very hard drink. Japanese and South Korean [tourists] especially like it. Americans find it too strong, but smooth,” she said.
However, if drinking it is a challenge, making it is a high-risk pursuit that can lead to the death of those charged with climbing coconut trees to collect the frothy sap that is fermented to produce the drink.
“People have fallen and died or had broken bones,” said Eugenio Andaya, who has been climbing the trees since he was a teenager.
“It is a very difficult job, but I just pray and leave my fate to the Lord,” he said in a recent early morning visit to Tayabas, a sleepy, picturesque rural town about three hours’ drive from Manila.
Workers climb the trees without protective harnesses to prune the coconut flowers before they turn into fruits. The sap is allowed to drip into bamboo receptacles.
Like high-wire performers, the tappers navigate a network of bamboo bridges connecting the trees 9m above the ground, with blades on their waists and bags tightly strapped to their shoulders.
Pruning is mostly done in the afternoon, and the climbers return at dawn to collect the liquid “even before the roosters crow,” Andaya said.
Farmhands then deliver the sap to the distillery in big plastic containers that are carried behind their backs or on pack horses.
The sap is fermented into a local wine called tuba, which if distilled further, yields the colourless lambanog.
Capistrano said the process of distilling the equivalent of coconut vodka was first recorded in Tayabas in the early 19th century.
Founded by Spain in the 1580s as part of its move to Christianize its Asian colony, Tayabas lies in the shadow of Mount Banahaw, a spiritual place where shamans live and where rainwater rushing down the slopes keeps the land fertile.
According to local lore, the first known Tayabas distillery was owned by a Spanish soldier, named Alandy, who settled in the area.
Alandy’s line is now produced by the rival Mallari Distillery, whose owners trace their ancestry to the soldier and who still maintain the original recipe of a drink with a 90 proof grade, which means it contains 45 percent alcohol.
While the Mallari Distillery remains in operation, the Capistrano family said it has taken a lead in promoting the drink abroad.
Lambanog remains a cheap, popular drink across the Philippines. However, official data on how much income it generates domestically remains sketchy, with the beverage sold locally through neighborhood shops that do not remit any taxes or reports. In 2001 the government approached the Mallari and Capistrano houses and 14 other smaller lambanog distillers with a plan to develop the product for export.
It provided packaging expertise, introduced modern bottling operations and sponsored alcohol tasting tours for foreign buyers.
The trade department said the drink had been slowly penetrating the beverage markets in Australia, Japan and Macau.
It faces competition from Sri Lanka in particular, which targets Japan, South Korea and the Maldives with premium blends. Capistrano’s best-seller is lambanog spiked with local wild blackberries called liputi which offer a slightly sweet, tangy taste.
“We want the world to know that lambanog is the official Philippine liquor,” she said.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS