Factors affecting the fermentation process of Vietnamese traditional wine ("men la" wine) using "ba nang" wine starter

“Men la” wine is a traditional wine product of the upland people in Vietnam. The wine starters were made from sticky rice and local herbs. However, the wine made by the people's traditional methods witnessed unstable quality, thereby depending a lot on their own experiences. In fact, the Van Kieu people in Da Ban, Ba Nang commune, Dakrong district, Quang Tri province, Vietnam have made wine starters with 11 different types of indigenous leaves, the mixture of leaves were finely ground and then mixed with 100g of milled rice flour for making wine starter. Next, the shaped starters were placed in an airtight container and incubate under anaerobic conditions. After 3-4 days, the starters were taken out and dried to proper humidity for extending the shelf life. The aim of this study was to examine the factors affecting the fermentation process in the production of “Men la” wine with the use of the wine starters of the Van Kieu people in Da Ban, Ba Nang commune, Dakrong district, Quang Tri province, Vietnam. As a result, the appropriate parameters for getting the highest quality of wine were the mixture ratio of wine starter / whole rice were 8g / 1000g; solidly fermented for 4 days at 30 – 320C; fermented for 7 days at 250C with the ratio of rice ingredients and water being 1:2. The final product contained 4.952% of total sugar; 0.08% of reducing sugar; 0.315% acid; 0.104 g/l amino acid and 10.61 g/100ml of ethanol. The analysis results did not detect the methanol content in the distilled wine products to international standards meeting the methanol criteria in distilled wine products. The finished wine produced on a laboratory scale was recognized throughout, with a sweet taste equivalent to that of wine, in which, the flavor was prized higher than the local wine, the alcoholic fermentation time was shortened 2 days compared with local wine.