The Battle to Bottle Palm Wine

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. Fo ... Read full article.