Rice wine, Thai beer and other alcoholic drinks from Southeast Asia that are among the region’s finest and most notorious – snake wine, anyone?
- In Laos, Mekong River Eel Wine is made by fermenting rice with river eels and ginseng roots. Similar concoctions include those containing cobras and scorpions
- For many Thais, Sang Som ‘whisky’ (it’s rum) is the drink of choice, while the most popular alcoholic drinks in Malaysia are Tiger and Carlsberg lager beers
If you’ve travelled widely in Southeast Asia, the chances are that at some point you’ll have had a strange alcoholic concoction thrust at you, backed by a bleary-eyed smile. Usually, it’s wise to decline such offers, although hospitality can be tough to turn down.
Alternatively, you may have an exotic bottle – an impulse buy at some market or other – gathering dust at the back of your drinks cabinet. With international travel in Asia on hold, now may be the time to crack it open, for a taste of somewhere temporarily unreachable.
Many of these drinks are rice-based liquors guaranteed to blow your taste buds to the moon and back, and sometimes their ingredients are more shocking than their taste.
Of the numerous rice-based and fermented “whiskies and wines” to be found across Laos, Mekong River Eel Wine is the best known. More of a lightly golden-coloured spirit than a wine, it is made by fermenting rice with river eels and ginseng roots, and has a throat-burning, shudder-inducing snare to it.
