Taiwan Today

The 2008 Taiwanese movie Cape No.7 saw great success in many ways. It made a big splash at box office, won a number of domestic and international film awards, and propelled the characters, actors and crew members to fame. Malasun was another “name” made known by the film. A brand of millet wine featured in the movie, Malasun became one of the most popular alcoholic products in the market after the movie’s release.

Malasun, which means getting drunk in the language of the Amis tribe, is actually made by Sinyi Winery in Sinyi Township, Nantou County, where half of the residents are members of the Bunun tribe. According to Chang Sheng-cheng (張勝正), manager of Sinyi Winery, sales of the featured millet wine went up by 50 percent after its exposure in Cape No.7, and there have even been orders from mainland China since the movie was shown there in 2009. “What’s more encouraging is that through Malasun, more people get to know other alcoholic or agricultural products from the Sinyi Township Farmers’ Association, which runs the winery,” he says. “More people visit our winery and the gift shop, which is very helpful to the local economy.”

Sinyi Winery was actually Taiwan’s first private brewer. Taiwan imposed a state monopoly on alcoholic drinks in 1922 and private businesses were not permitted to make alcohol until 2002, when Taiwan acceded to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Sinyi set up shop the same year the ban was lifted. The Council of Agriculture’s (COA) “preparatory work” for promoting rural wineries operated by farmers’ organizations, however, was begun a little earlier. Wang Wen-liang (王文良), chief of the Marketing and Processing Division of the COA’s Agriculture and Food Agency (AFA), explains that shortly after the September 21, 1999 earthquake, the government urgently sought ways to revive agriculture-related industries. The AFA figured that as a high value-added product, alcoholic beverages would be able to generate more income for farmers. And like wineries in other countries, the rural wineries could also help the local leisure and recreation industry. So when the ban on winemaking was officially lifted in 2002, several of the wineries that were being “prepared” were quick to meet the requirements for licensing.

As a matter of fact, residents of Taiwan’s agricultural areas commonly made their own wine from local produce despite the government monopoly. Residents of Sinyi Township, for example, have long been making alcoholic brews from plums and millet, as it is one of Taiwan’s major plum producing areas and making millet wine is a tradition of the Bunun people. “Although it’s illegal, most residents here know the basics of making plum or millet wine and each family usually has its own formula,” Chang says.

Scaling Up

But making large quantities of commercial alcoholic products that require uniform quality is different from home brewing. To equip those who were interested in setting up rural wineries, the COA established a team of experts to help the villages learn winemaking techniques and other details of building a winemaking business from scratch. Nine wineries in areas that were hit hard by the 921 Earthquake also received financial assistance from the 921 Earthquake Post-disaster Recovery Commission. And in addition to assistance from the government, there is help from a number of university departments. Sinyi Winery, for example, works with members of the Department of Food Science at National Chung Hsing University in Taichung, while Dahu Wineland in Miaoli County works with the Department of Food Science at Fu Jen Catholic University in New Taipei City. The university departments assist in standardizing production and developing new wines for the wineries.

With their local tradition of winemaking and help from various sources, the rural wineries completed their first batches of liquor from local produce in no time. Sinyi Winery came up with several plum and millet-based alcohols, while Puli Distillery, which is operated by the Puli Farmers’ Association in Nantou County, used locally grown roses, passion fruit and pine as the base of a number of alcoholic beverages. Shu-Sheng Domaine, which is a winery run by a farmers’ group in Waipu District, Taichung City, sells several popular red and white wines. A light strawberry wine is made by Dahu Wineland, which is run by the Dahu Farmers’ Association in Miaoli County. According to the COA, the number of wineries run by farmers’ organizations has increased from the initial nine to 25. Production quantity has also been increasing between 5 and 6 percent every year to a total of 166,000 liters of alcoholic drinks last year, with a sales value of NT$122 million (US$3.9 million).

The products from these rural wineries are evaluated by the COA through wine competitions. Top products are recommended for international contests and several of them have won awards at such events. The Wildness plum brandy made by Sinyi Winery, for example, won a silver medal in 2010 and a gold medal this year at the International Wine and Spirit Competition held by the German Wine Academy. The Light Strawberry Wine produced by Dahu Wineland won a silver medal in 2010 and a gold medal this year at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles. Huang Chi-wen (黃啟文), director of the Dahu Farmers’ Association’s tourism division, notes that Dahu Wineland is Asia’s only winery that makes strawberry wine. Thanks to the quality of the strawberries and other ingredients, the wine is aromatic with a hint of sourness, while it also has a special tart flavor that emerges in the process of fermentation. Its low alcohol content of only 6.5 percent makes the strawberry wine especially popular among female consumers and young people.

Sweet Strawberry Success

Huang notes that Dahu has been growing strawberries since the late 1950s and has developed its strawberry fields as a tourist attraction since the 1980s. During the strawberry season, which runs roughly from November to March the following year, tourists stream into the town to pick the delicious fruit, generating significant revenue for local farmers. The strawberry industry, though lucrative, is seasonal, so the farmers’ association joined the COA’s rural winery project in order to provide a steadier source of income for local producers. Currently, Dahu Wineland produces between 20,000 and 30,000 liters of strawberry wine each year. “Our products are sold year ’round but only locally, which attracts people to visit Dahu during the off-season,” Huang says. “This allows people to experience other tourism resources here and is very helpful to the local economy.” The “other resources,” according to Huang, include different fruit that ripens throughout the year, as well as hot springs in the area.

While there are enough tourists to keep the winery busy the whole year at Dahu, things are more challenging for Sinyi Winery, which is located along the New Central Cross-Island Highway. Xiao Tai-sheng (蕭泰昇), a marketing specialist for the local farmers’ association, says that when the winery was set up, it was merely one more building along the route that most people traveled on their way to nearby Alishan or Yushan National Park. The first priority for the winery’s marketing strategy, therefore, was to draw people’s interest to its products through its distributors in other parts of the island. “We’re not the only manufacturer of plum or millet alcohol and winemaking isn’t exactly rocket science, so it was hard for products from a young rural winery to compete against those from well-established local or foreign brands,” Xiao says. “But wine has a lot to do with culture, so our chance was to give the products a local identity that immediately makes people think of Sinyi Township or the local culture here.”

Since half of the township’s residents are members of the Bunun tribe, the marketing team decided to draw on local aboriginal culture, especially for packaging designs and the names given to wines and liqueurs from Sinyi Township. Its Lost Boar grain wine, for example, features a label with two young boars carrying aboriginal hunting knives with several question marks above them. The inspiration comes from an old tribal story in the days when private winemaking was prohibited. There was an old woman who made fine millet wine, the story goes. Every night, she secretly distilled her homebrew, and then took the dregs that were left over from the distillation and threw them into a mountain gully. The sweet smell of the dregs attracted wild boars, which followed the scent all the way back to her house, but in doing so lost their own way home. “There’s endless inspiration from the local culture when it comes to legends and stories,” Chang Sheng-cheng says.

To make the winery more attractive as a tourist destination, Sinyi Township Farmers’ Association also invested more than NT$100 million (US$3.3 million) to expand the facility. The additions included an exhibition hall showcasing Bunun culture, a wine and liqueur making room and a wine tasting room, while an old cellar that had been used to store salted prunes was converted into a wine cellar, where French white oak sherry barrels are used to store wine. The idea of making its wine a cultural product seems to have worked well, as the winery has seen its car park full on most days and about half of its production volume is sold at the winery’s own shop, according to Chang.

Through making and selling alcoholic products, the rural wineries also serve the function of stabilizing the prices of local crops and thus provide a bit more security for farmers. Dahu Farmers’ Association, for example, purchases 30 to 40 tons of strawberries from local farmers every year toward the end of the strawberry season, when there are fewer tourists visiting the farms. Likewise, the Sinyi Township Farmers’ Association purchases about 250 tons of plums each year. Chang explains that the township used to export tens of thousands of tons of salted prunes to Japan annually until the late 1990s, when plums from mainland China began to dominate the market there. Purchasing plums from the local farmers who remain in Sinyi has more or less offset the loss of business in the Japanese market.

The ultimate goal for Chang and other winery managers is to build their establishments into something like the rural wineries  or distilleries in France or Scotland where, though small, the combination of local specialties and culture creates a pleasant experience for tourists. That may still be a long way off given Taiwan’s short winemaking history, but at the end of the day, what really matters to local farmers is that they receive a fair reward for their hard work. The expanding market for wines and spirits made from the crops they grow is at least starting to provide them with that assurance.

Write to Jim Hwang at jim@mail.gio.gov.tw