Story: Vietnamese Snake Wine
By Tobias Peciva
Written on 8 May 2008
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Vietnamese snake wine is used to impress tourists and increase libido. Unfortunately, the taste doesn't quite live up to the marketing hype.
Snake Wine Bottles
Vietnamese snake wine for sale in the Mekong Delta. The wine often contains scorpions and birds as well, but in this case it was plain cobra flavor.
Exploring, preparing and eating the local food will be a highlight of any trip to Vietnam. But while most Vietnamese cuisine is supremely palatable, there are a few local delicacies that break the mold. Vietnamese snake wine is one of them.
Enthusiastically offered to tourists at every available opportunity, snake wine is essentially snake-infused rice wine. It can be found all over Vietnam, and is hard to miss: Not only do the bottles have characteristic yellow caps; each bottle also contains a venomous snake - usually a cobra - and sometimes scorpions, birds or additional snakes.
To make the wine, the animals are added whole to the bottle and allowed to infuse for several months. The snake venom is neutralized by the alcohol, but the snake itself lends a strong flavor to the wine. The end product is said to have many beneficial effects, including, of course, increased libido.
So what is it like? The palate is warmer, sweeter and more complex than that of plain rice wine. It is not altogether unpleasant, but perhaps a little sharp for western tastes. The wine has a very long finish, but the aftertaste becomes more pungent over time, to the point where you'd rather wash it away with a cold beer - or perhaps another glass of snake wine.
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Comments...
8 May 2008, Todd Lappin said:
Yum! Full bodied with a reptilian bouquet!
13 May 2008, Frans & Claire van der Lee said:
What vintage do you recommend? ;-)
14 May 2008, Tobias Peciva said:
Well, you'd want it old enough that the alcohol has neutralized any bird flu viruses, but not so old that the wine is starting to dissolve the bottle. That said, I'd worry less about the vintage and more about how long it'll be before you can find something to wash it down with!