Around Dili

Palm wine

If you’ve ever wondered what the locals in Dili drink for kicks, then wonder no more. The preferred tipple of our good Timorese friends is palm wine. You may have seen it sold on the side of the street. The unboiled version is a dirty-white liquid that looks and smells like raw eggs.

Palm wine in Timor-Leste

If you’ve never tried palm wine then you really should, if only for the experience. You can buy a 1.5-liter bottle of unboiled palm wine for 50 cents, making it about the same price as water. Palm wine is a bitter drink with a hell of a kick. It’s enough to make a grown man shake in his boots and takes some getting used to. You might have seen groups of youths sat around drinking it.

Palm wine is made from the sap of young leaves of palm trees. The sap is initially sweet before it is fermented. Fermentation takes a couple of hours and yields a sweet, mildly alcoholic wine. If the wine is left to ferment longer, you get the sour, acidic taste and the stronger wine that we are treated to in Timor-Leste. If the wine is left to ferment even longer it becomes vinegar.

A 600-millimeter bottle of distilled palm wine costs $2 and is even stronger than the regular stuff. Drink at your peril.