Tuba in the Philippines

February 14, 2009 | By admin |

Have you ever tasted liquors and wines? I know some of you already have. It will be a miracle if you haven’t.

Well, if you think you’ve already tasted all the good wines, then it’s now time for you to think again because here you’ll discover a new wine that will make your mouth water. It is a wine we are very sure most of you haven’t tasted yet. Together, let us discover Cebu’s famous liquor—tuba.

Tuba in Philippine History

In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan, the first colonizer of the Philippines, arrived with troop in one of the provinces in the Philippines and was then offered a bamboo tube containing a drink.

The drink was said to be the sap taken from coconut flowers before they bloom. The sap is mixed with the bark of Rhizophora ocally known as tungog. After some time, it ferments and becomes a mild alcoholic drink having a bittersweet taste.

According to the book Early Mapping of Southeast Asia by Thomas Suarez, the King “had a meal of many food brought, all on porcelain plates, with several vessels of wine.” The ‘wine’ was the tuba of the Filipinos, which Pigafetta called arrack. The Filipino liquor was, perhaps, a similar intoxicant that was enjoyed by Marco Polo in Sumatra, Indonesia, two and a quarter centuries earlier.

This was also served during the Sikatuna-Legazpi blood compact. Legazpi made friends with the Boholanos by performing a blood compact with one of Bohol’s famous leaders, Raja Sikatuna. According to historians, the blood compact, also known as sandugo (literally, “one blood”), which implied that “since the same blood now flowed in their veins, they had become members of the same family, bound to observe loyalty to one another.” This made Legazpi and Sikatuna brothers by virtue of the rite.