Days of wine, and more wine

pretty replica of a Hakka kitchen stands at the bottom of the stairs of the Golden Capital Restaurant in Puli (top). Traditional Bunun tribal icons guard the plum wine center at Sinyi, Nantou (above left). Shattered but mended storage jars line the cellar, reminders of the devastating September 1999 earthquake (above right).[Photo/China Daily]

Food and drink are among the main attractions of a holiday, and in Taiwan Pauline D Loh finds abundant options for the thirsty traveler in the countryside.

The smell hits you even before you see the giant earthen jar that advertises the brewery. The sharp, sweet, slightly musty aroma of good shaoxing wine commandeers the breeze and leads the visitor straight to the entrance arch decorated with thousands of shards of old wine bottles.

This is Puli, a mountainous township in Nantou, Taichung, that also happens to be the center of Taiwan island, geographically speaking. If you are going to Sun Moon Lake, 30 minutes away by road, it is an easy stopover.

Puli's main claim to fame is the shaoxing brewery that has been making Taiwan's favorite wine for a longer time than the locals can remember. But in September 1999, a devastating earthquake destroyed the original brewery and almost all its precious vintages. The shards on the door are reminders of that tragedy.

A new factory has been built across the road, and a museum dedicated to the history and manufacture of the wine constructed right by what little is left of the original.

Chinese liquor is roughly divided into two categories: Yellow wines are brewed from a fermentation process and the white spirit so popular in the north is distilled, or double distilled, to create a much stronger liquor.

At the Puli Cultural Artifacts Exhibition Hall, you can read about the origins of shaoxing yellow wine and how it came about.

According to legend, Du Kang had some leftover rice that he had tossed into a hole in a mulberry tree. After a few days, he noticed a strange fragrance coming from the tree and discovered that the rice he had so casually thrown away had fermented and turned into wine. Later, Du Kang turned this happy serendipity into a business opportunity and started experimenting with sorghum as well. And so, they say, shaoxing wine was invented.

Apart from the myth, the Puli wine museum is meticulous about explaining the traditional brewing process as well as modern manufacture, leading the visitor through the stages with well-crafted, interactive displays interspersed with classical poems and couplets on the joys of fine wine.

For example, little wooden tablets record exactly 100 questions on winemaking. To find out the answers, you simply flip the tablets.

There is also a brave attempt to educate the English-speaking with flow-charts documenting ingredients, brewing stages and final products. While the explanations will never stand the test of close grammatical scrutiny, they are adequate explanations that help de-mystify the process.

On the ground floor below the museum is a supermarket and food hall where the visitor can buy edible souvenirs mostly made with shaoxing. The good bottles, be warned, are not cheap, but there are affordable samples in mini jars to take home. There is also a dazzling selection of food, from wine-marinated chicken to drunken eggs.

If you are hankering after a hot meal, hop on to a cab and ask to be taken to a reputable Hakka restaurant. There are many in town, and the one we went to was called Jin Du or Golden Capital. Our guide chose it because he said Hong Kong food writer Chua Lan had visited the restaurant.

Like most restaurants in Taiwan, this one is very well decorated. At the foot of the stairs was a display of a traditional Hakka kitchen. It did have a stove and a wooden table, but my cook's eye tells me it's too pretty to be true. Still, it did set the mood for food and we were ready to order.

In a winemaking town, it stands to reason that most of the dishes on the menu have the showcase product as the main ingredient. Thus, we ordered pork belly braised in wine must and soya sauce, drunken chicken and a simple stir-fried kale flavored with wine.

Taking a detour south from Puli, we headed towards Nantou, where, our guide tells us, a plum wine industry flourishes in a little town called Sinyi. What makes it special is that the winemaking is mainly managed by the Bunun tribe, which makes up about 95 percent of the population of this small hillside community.

The wine is made from the little hard, green plums native to the area and production is timed according to the naturalist calendar of the Bunun tribe that is divided into 12 unequal months. The first calendars were nothing more than lengths of rope with knots on them, but they accurately predicted flowering, fruiting and harvests.

Modern branding has made much of the ancient, paganistic brewing methods and there is even a guardian god erected at the entrance that is made from decidedly new age metal parts. He's been named A-mi-noon.

The plum wine factory is sadly out of bounds, but posters on the wall explain the production process. If you want to taste the final product, there is a huge showroom displaying endless variations, and then some.

Here, you can sample and buy not just the original fermented wine, but endless cocktail variations and pickled plums.

It's a bit bewildering and I would have preferred knowing more about traditional Bunun wine culture, origins and customs. Instead, it was a very much in-your-face attempt to show off a quickness to adopt up-to-date marketing techniques.

Taiwan, as in other parts of China, is caught in the dilemma of old and new. How do you preserve the traditional and exploit its value as a tourist attraction? And how much do you adapt to keep up with the times?

For the independent traveler in Taiwan, a leisurely exploration of the island may give you some answers, but perhaps not all.