The craft of making rice wine of the Mong people in La Pan Tan commune - Mu Cang Chai has existed for a long time. The golden rice grains that crystallize the diligence and creativity of the Mong people are the precious ingredients to make rice wine - a unique specialty of the Mong people here. They have the secret to making special yeast. The yeast to make rice wine must be leaf yeast. Unlike other types of yeast to make wine, it is very elaborately prepared, requiring a lot of effort and requiring skill and sophistication to achieve quality. Leaf yeast is synthesized by the people from 15 types of plants, converging all the herbs of the mountains and forests such as cardamom seeds, wild chili roots, galangal... Selected according to a family secret that only the older men in the family know and can process the herbs into leaf yeast to brew their very own wine. These types, when fermented, will create valuable medicinal properties such as: preventing colds, eliminating flu, promoting blood circulation, reducing joint pain, and not causing headaches.
To make a good wine product, in addition to the main ingredients above, other indispensable tools in the wine making process are: a stove made of baked clay; a double boiler made of precious wood cores taken from the forest, with a diameter of about 60 - 70cm, a height of about 01m, can hold 30kg of rice at a time; a sieve to pour rice on top when boiling; a bamboo tube to guide the drops of wine after being refined; a pan to hold the water for boiling is made of cast iron, with a diameter of about 01m.
The people brew wine by hand, through many stages and also have to depend on different weather conditions such as sunny, rainy, dry, humid to produce quality wine. The first step in the wine brewing process of the Mong La Pan Tan people is fermenting. The leaves and seeds of the forest trees used to make yeast must be washed, dried or sun-dried, then pounded into a fine powder, mixed with water, shaped into small balls like marbles and dried on the kitchen loft. The time to ferment the leaves also depends on the weather, if the weather is cold it can take months.
Rice used to make wine is taken from terraced fields and selected to have ripe, firm, and even grains. The rice is poured into a pot to boil, then scooped out and spread evenly on fresh banana leaves until cooled, mixed with yeast and put into a sealed jar to ferment. According to the experience of the people, fermenting wine is a very important step, usually fermenting for 10 to 15 days, but the longer it is fermented, and for a full month, the better the wine will be.
The difference in cooking is that the craftsman uses a sieve with small holes placed on the surface of the pot or pan containing water. Then, fill the sieve with the ingredients to make wine, not letting the ingredients fall under the pot, the cooking pot on the surface of the pot (pan) covers the sieve of ingredients. This is a double-boil cooking method, the steam from the boiling water in the pot (pan) rises up and permeates the ingredients on the sieve surface, condensing so that drops of precious wine flow into the pot to collect the wine. The alcohol concentration reaches 40 - 45 degrees. The wine is double-boiled twice, the first time is to remove impurities and filter the essence, the second time is to cool with aromatic leaves of the mountains and forests. With the cooking process having to go through a long and elaborate time, La Pan Tan rice wine has a very distinctive flavor, with a pungent smell of the forest mixed with the scent of upland rice, fragrant, mild, although the concentration is high, when drinking it is very delicious, drinking it still feels refreshing, light and does not cause headaches like other wines. Drinking it in the morning will give you more strength in your shoulders so you can work all day without feeling tired. Drinking it in the evening will give you a good night's sleep, and when you wake up you will feel alert and your skin will be rosy.
With the concept that wine is the scent of heaven and earth, in the past, people only used it to worship heaven and earth, ancestors, festivals, festivals, weddings and to treat friends. Nowadays, with the support of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism to preserve traditional crafts, the craft of making rice wine of the La Pan Tan people has gradually developed into a commodity product to serve the needs of people and tourists. Many tourists, especially foreigners, have bought La Pan Tan rice wine as a gift for friends and relatives when visiting Yen Bai. When you visit Yen Bai, remember to come to the Mong La Pan Tan people in Mu Cang Chai district to sip a cup of rice wine to experience more about the unique flavor of this specialty.
It can be said that with the prestige and quality of the best wine in the La Pan Tan wine region, the market will increasingly expand, becoming known to more and more customers, helping the wine making profession in La Pan Tan to develop further, contributing to poverty reduction and preserving the brand for this precious wine.
- La Pan Tan Commune, Mu Cang Chai District, Yen Bai Province
