Western Ghats Kokum Foundation - Organic Farming Association of ...

WOW! ‘Wine Of Waste’ tropical fruits
Miguel Arcanjo Braganca and Dr. John Carmo Rodrigues, Goa
It is possible to make fruit wine from tropical fruits, with or without addition of
external sugar source. The process is often fruit specific and can be organic if rigorous
attention is paid to hygiene during crop production and post harvest processing of the fruit
and sugar source. Different fruits have different biologically active compounds and, hence,
there is a need to explore the possibilities of using fruits hitherto not used commercially for
wine-making. Inspired by the tremendous work done for the development of OrWine from
grapes, a concerted effort was made in Goa, India, to produce a good quality wine of tropical
fruit with consumer acceptability. This paper discusses the work done on one such fruit.
Ever since the inhibiting effect of hydroxyl citric acid (or HCA) on lipogenesis was
reported by Dr. John Lowenstein, there has been a growing interest in the Garcinia species
to control obesity. Antioxidants and poly-phenols, biologically active compounds found in
red wine, are reported to have beneficial effects. In the Vedic era of ancient India, wine was
known as soma or sura and drunk in religious rituals. Medical research has shown that
consuming a small glass of red wine daily can help cure diabetes Type 2. The opportunity
to use fruits that are grown organically by tradition and to make wine on a commercial scale
through an organic process needs to be considered with the seriousness it deserves.
Kokum is a fruit species native to the Western coast of India known as the Konkan, of
which the state of Goa is the centre with the cities of Mumbai (Bombay) and Kochi (Cochin)
near the two extremes. Locally known as Kokum, Bhirand or Birinda and in Portuguese as
Brindao or Brindonna, it is a close relative of the Mangosteen, Garcinia mangostana Linn.
The maroon-red rind has been used in the Konkan cuisine as a souring agent for meat and
fish curries and to break down the mucilage in some vegetables like Abelmoschus esculenta.
It is also consumed as a post-lunch drink, with coriander, green chili, garlic and asofoetida
as optional additives. The ripening of fruits often coincides with the onset of the South-
West monsoon rains, thereby preventing their sun drying as per the traditional practice.
Kokum rind is used to make syrup, and in recent times, into a juice or RTS drink with
TSS adjusted 20 Brix and acidity to 0.3% with the addition of sugar and citric acid as
needed. This has opened up an opportunity to process the late season fruits. This waste of
edible fruits can now be prevented by use for aseptic packaging and processing into valueadded
products including fermentation into wine.
The recipes for wine making were closely-guarded household secrets in Goa. A large
area of Goa was a colony of Portugal for 451 years (25 November, 1510 to 19 December,
1961), while others were under Portuguese influence for shorter periods. Each family clan
had its own brand of wine with a body, flavour and bouquet that was different from the rest.
The recipes were rarely written and generally passed from generation to generation by
hands-on learning. Mr. Edwin Saldanha put all the secret recipes he knew and tips on wine
making in a manuscript and published it as a book. The slim 95 (now 105) pages book was
as iconoclastic as the atom bomb over Hiroshima in 1945 and as path-breaking as the
discovery of the Bordeaux mixture in 1885. More people are now able to understand and
experiment with wine-making. The development of the Garcinia wine since 2005 is one of
the down-line benefits of this book.
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Resource Book on Kokum (Garcinia indica Choisy)
Western Ghats Kokum Foundation, Panaji - Goa