I had the chance to sip a mug of red coco wine after my carpenter uncle bought it from a coco wine collector who has a collecting station near my house. Coco wine comes from the young saps of coconut trees which are abound in our place. Coconut trees are protected by a law and that cutting down them needs prior approval from the Philippine Coconut Authority.
Every morning, the collector would gather and deliver the wine to the flea markets or in mini stores. In my birthplace or as other remote villages in Mindanao, the stuff is popular as poor man’s wine. You can’t find it in bars. If you see coco wine in a bar, then I am pretty sure that bar is located up in a boondock LOL.
I had my first taste of Tuba when I was young. My grandmother loved it then as part of her breakfast. Our mananggiti (coco wine collector) friend Manong Dencio, whose wife was Manang Vencia (manong/manang mean old man/woman to us said as form of respect), used to deliver a liter of fresh and sweet coco wine every morning as part of his rent to the coconut trees he sourced out. When the coco saps from where it is extracted are properly maintained, the juice tastes the best. The lowly juice is no lowly at all in that comes with alcohol content enough to make you feel groggy – from suave to rough. A liquid candy which has a spike of alcohol. A glass of it is enough to bring you into a state of trance. LOL. Ugly faces become pretty. Oh, please one more shot.
When it gets you tipsy, you can be capable of doing sins. That is it. In fact, many rambles in local fiestas where the lowly wine is present usually started off with a drinking session over gallons of coco wine and over some “pulutan” (side dish). In the drinking session, there is only one glass for all as the “tagay” (the turn) being passed on to the next drinker by a “gunner.” Some drinkers would mix it with other liquor of higher alcohol content. (My grandmother would mix it with popular softdrink.) Sadly, when the alcohol from the wine gets into their heads instead of their stomachs, deadly ramble may erupt. I can only presume that the wine more often has bad effect on these drinkers when shortens their patience and emboldens them even more. Hahaha, just maybe.
“Kinutil” is one preparation we usually had during ordinary Sunday family gathering. In a kinutil (perhaps from the rootword "kutil" which means to mix), fresh egg, hot tsokolate (powdered cacao thawed in hot water) and condensed milk are added for all ages in the family to drink. But it is where small children get their first dosage of alcohol sublimely hidden in the “kinutil.” With all the ingredients, the concoction thickens to become syrupy.
The toxicity of the coco sap juice varies from a number of days they are fermented. “Bahal” is one day old and onward which could pass as another hard liquor. “Bahalina” is another product purified from if. Fresh tuba finds their way to the flea market in containers. The seller displays transfer them in glass gallons where its foam comes oozing from the tips of the transparent containers. “Palahubog” or drunkards are said to be unfortunately hooked on the lowly tuba so that when they see bubbles tumbling up and down inside the gallon, they would feel intense craving of the coco wine. This joke is usually poked at the consummate “palahubog” whose life and happiness depend on the coco wine.
