The Battle to Bottle Palm Wine

Summary

It’s a common sight in tropical places from Nigeria to India to the Philippines. In the mornings, before the harsh sun has burned the mist away, tappers climb the palm trees. Aided with nothing more than wiry muscles and woven rope or cloth, they scale to the top, risking the steep drop to collect palm sap. Like tropical maple-syrup collectors, they pierce the tree and tie earthen pots to catch the juice that seeps out of this wound. As these pots fill over the course of the day, natural yeast and bacteria from the air will work their magic on the sap, transforming the thin, sugary, slightly coconutty nectar into lightly fizzy, sweet-and-sour, milky white booze. This is palm wine. Onye Ahanotu, an artist and materials engineer turned food scientist, grew up hearing about the importance of palm wine, but rarely sampled the drink itself. His parents immigrated from Southeast Nigeria to the Napa Valley in California. “An area that wasn’t populated by a lot of Nigerians,” Ahanotu says. Food—especially his favorite dish, okra soup—was his most powerful connection to his family’s heritage. Tapping sap from a date palm tree in Odisha, India. Subhashish Panigrahi/CC BY-SA 4.0 In the stories he heard about Nigeria, palm wine enjoyed a pride of place. Hopeful spouses presented it to their in-laws as part of marriage traditions; weddings weren’t complete without it. “I understood it to be a cornerstone of culture and society,” says Ahanotu. There was only one problem: Ahanotu’s family couldn’t get palm wine in the United States. If you hunt hard enough, you can find the odd bottle of imported palm wine, such as Ghana’s Nkulenu brand, in a few specialty stores in the United States. But the beverage hasn’t been widely distributed, and even in countries where it is produced, such as Nigeria and India, efforts to commercialize it remain smaller scale. A terra cotta pot of foaming toddy in South India. Vinay Kudithipudi/CC BY 2.0 The lack of palm wine in U.S. markets is partly due ...