Wherever coconut trees and wine drinkers co-exist, there’s a quick intoxicating beverage.
Master Navigator Mau Piailug, seated at right, receives visiting sailors (in leis) at his island home on Satawal. Photo: Gary Kubota, for the Star Bulletin.
On January 23, two double-hulled canoes left Hawai’i on a voyage through Polynesia and Japan. They’re sailing for adventure (natch) but foremost their trip honors a man named Mau Piailug, resident of the tiny Pacific island of Satawal.
Mau took one of these boats, the Hokule‘a, on its maiden voyage, to Tahiti in 1976. In the decades since, “he shared his voyaging and navigation traditions with young Hawaiians eager to learn about how their ancestors sailed the long sea roads of Polynesia without navigational instruments. …His teachings have inspired communities in Hawai‘i and Polynesia to build more than a dozen deep-sea voyaging canoes.”
The newer canoe on this trip, the Alingano Maisu, was built in Hawai’i and is being delivered to the great navigator as a gift.
The Hawaiian sailors reached Satawal last Wednesday and there enjoyed five days of Satawalese hospitality and cuisine. Gary Kubota of the Star Bulletin is on board the Hokule‘a (what an assignment!) and reports, “The crews spent an extra day on Satawal at Piailug’s request to be at a family celebration at his home, where they received a buffet of island food including fish, breadfruit, taro and coconut milk. Several crew members were invited by some people to also drink faluba, an alcoholic beverage made from the flower of the coconut tree.”
Coconut flowers. Photo: Jim Conrad.
This is where the ceremonial sea voyage becomes a Human Flower Project, too. We’ve since learned that this beverage is popular wherever coconut trees grow. It seems to go by the name faluba also in Fiji and on the Ifaluk atoll (where it ”occasionally is still used as payment for labor”). But coconut flower wine goes by many other names: tuba in the Philippines, kallu in southern India, poyo in Sierra Leone.
In coconut country, the drink is ubiquitous because, like sun tea, it’s a cinch to make. As the flowers emerge, somebody with strong thighs shimmies up the tree and cuts the bud, leaving a gourd or some other receptacle to catch the fresh sap. Done.
“Palm sap begins fermenting immediately after collection due to natural yeasts in the air. Within two hours, fermentation yields an aromatic wine of up to 4% alcohol content, mildly intoxicating and sweet. The wine may be allowed to ferment longer, up to a day, to yield a stronger, more sour and acidic taste, which some people prefer. Longer fermentation produces vinegar instead of stronger wine.”
According to wiki, there are roadside bars for palm flower wine in the Congo (in Houston, these establishments are called “ice houses” and serve beer). Southern India has its “toddy shops,” which appear intermittently to close down and reopen at the discretion of local authorities. Here’s a piece about the hard lot of toddy makers in the Maldives.
While we’re on the subject of flower wines, here’s a brief guide to making them from Nicholas Morcinek. He claims that just about any benign flower, free of herbicides/pesticides, should do, dandelion, red clover, rose and rosemary being time-tested. Here’s a recipe for gorse flower wine. Please check with an extension agent before experimenting, though, as some flowers are surely poisonous. (And the mere suggestion of rosemary wine is, in our view, a powerful inducement to sobriety).
The Hokule’a (right) and Maisu near Pulap, heading to Satawal. Photo: Mike Taylor, Captain, Kama Hele.
We should also note that the crews departed from Satawal yesterday wearing leis. You can follow the continuing voyage of the Hokule’a on this blog and (wow!) via M. Shintani’s tracking map.
The crews expect to be sailing for many more weeks, winding up, if all goes as planned, June 9 in Yokohama, Japan.
Leave a Reply