Tapuy is the rice wine of the Cordillera in northern Luzon, the Philippines – made in Benguet, Ifugao and Mountain Province. Steamed glutinous rice is mixed with a dried starter called bubod and left in a closed jar; molds in the starter turn the rice starch into sugar while yeasts turn that sugar into alcohol, at the same time. The result is a sweet-acidic, surprisingly strong wine and a pot of soft, boozy rice lees (Dela Rosa & Medina, 2022).
Tapuy in Cordillera Life
In Ifugao, rice farming follows a yearly cycle of rituals – from sowing the seedbeds to filling the granary and giving thanks for the harvest – performed within the family by mumbaki, men trained in ritual. Chickens, pigs and rice wine are offered to the gods for protection from pests and disease and for the welfare of the village (Ifugao Heritage Galleries, UCLA). Tapuy is also shared at feasts and family occasions across the region, and producers now sell bottled tapuy.
The terraces those rituals belong to are a UNESCO World Heritage site (UNESCO). They are often called 2,000 years old, but radiocarbon dating and ethnohistory now point to large-scale terracing beginning in the 16th century, around the time of Spanish contact – a view that, the researchers argue, fits Ifugao oral histories better (Acabado & Martin, 2024).
Bubod: the Starter
Bubod is a small dried disc made from ground glutinous rice, the roots of a wild plant (Bidens pilosa), ginger and crumbs of an older bubod, which carries the microbes forward. It holds molds – Aspergillus oryzae, Rhizopus oryzae and Mucor – and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Dela Rosa & Medina, 2022). Recipes and herbs vary between communities.
It belongs to the same family of mold-and-yeast rice starters as Indonesian ragi for tapai, Chinese yeast balls for jiu niang, Korean nuruk for makgeolli and the Himalayan marcha used for chang. Japanese sake and amazake use a single cultivated mold (koji) instead. Outside the Philippines, Filipino groceries and online shops sell bubod; Chinese yeast balls will ferment the rice too, but the result isn’t tapuy.
How Strong Is Tapuy?
Stronger than most people expect. In a laboratory study, four Cordillera rice varieties fermented with traditional bubod at 25°C for 7 days reached 9.1–18.6% alcohol – red Kintoman and brown Tinawon rice around 9–10%, black Ballatinao and white Bongkitan rice 16–19% – and the pH fell to 3.2–3.4 within the first days (Dela Rosa & Medina, 2022). Home batches will vary with the starter, the rice and the temperature, but treat finished tapuy as a wine, not a light fermented drink. After a few days the rice is sweet with only a little alcohol; the longer it ferments, the drier and stronger it gets.
Is Tapuy Probiotic?
Don’t count on it. When researchers cultured bacteria from tapuy made in four Benguet towns, they found mostly Bacillus and Lactobacillus species, several of them candidate probiotics – but also Bacillus wiedmannii, a member of the Bacillus cereus group, in every sample (Sanico & Medina, 2022). No human study has tested health effects of drinking tapuy, and at wine strength the alcohol matters more than the microbes. If you want a fermented rice food with little alcohol, eat young tapai or make amazake.
Serving and Using Tapuy
- As a drink: strained, chilled, in small cups.
- In cooking: like sake or Shaoxing wine – in marinades, or to deglaze a pan.
- The lees: the leftover fermented rice is sweet and alcoholic; eat it in small amounts, not for children.
Other rice ferments from the Philippines include balao-balao and burong isda; for another communal rice wine, see Vietnam’s rượu cần. The Ilocos region also makes a sugarcane wine, basi. Eastern India’s tribal rice beer, handia, is also brewed with a dried herbal starter.