Kon Tum jar wine

If you have the opportunity to travel to Kon Tum and explore the local cuisine, do not miss the chance to try the jar wine. The jar wine is a special drink of the ethnic minorities in this mountainous region. This natural spicy yeast has become an indispensable flavor in many of their festivals and has become a “specialty” of lowland tourists when traveling to this place.

Kon Tum jar wine

The main ingredients of jar wine are made from sticky rice or cassava, and a special yeast made from many forest leaves, which are kept sealed for a long time so that when brought out, each taste is sweet.

It is believed that jar wine has a very unique flavor that no other wine has, because the yeast used to brew the wine is made from many types of tree roots and leaves that the ethnic people here find in the deep forest. That special yeast, when brewed, creates a very unique flavor, the flavor of the great forest. Nowadays, jar wine is made from many types of market yeast, although it is also sweet, it has lost the great forest quality as before. For the ethnic people here, to make a typical jar of jar wine, there must be more than 20 types of leaves and roots of forest trees.

After bringing the special leaves and roots back, they will pound them, mix them together to create sweetness, then dry them so that when used, they only need to squeeze them loosely. Every time you cook, just take this yeast and sprinkle it evenly on the jar containing rice, corn, etc. in an appropriate ratio, then cover it with banana leaves and leave it for more than 15 days before using. And especially, the longer the jar wine is left, the more fragrant and aromatic the flavor will be. 

Jar wine has become a Kon Tum specialty as a gift in particular and a specialty of the Central Highlands in general. People say that if you come here without enjoying jar wine, then your joy is half gone. Because through the way you drink it, through the flavor hidden behind this wine is a long-standing cultural feature of the ethnic people, which will make the person enjoying it feel more and love this windy Central Highlands more.