A toast to the Indian sake

The project is part of the Rs 17 lakh, two-year research, which began in January 2007. “Soon, we will have a pilot project and eventually extend it to commercial scales,” says Singaravadivel.

His team took up the idea of making wine from rice after they came upon some literature on tribals of the hilly terrain in the Northeast, particularly Sikkim, who brew a traditional alcoholic drink made from rice. “The tribes, of course, make a very crude version of the wine, but they have achieved 12 per cent alcoholic content. We got the idea from them and decided to try it out in our lab,” says PPRC scientist, Dr. K. Suresh Kumar. The team is working hard on increasing the yield from rice waste and perfecting the organic strain.

While the objective is to utilise the waste materials and by-products of rice milling industry and convert them to value-added products, the PPRC has taken it up as a challenge to brew the perfect rice wine. “The Japanese have the skills and have produced the right strain of organism. While they have lent the knowhow and the name of the organism, what we need to know is the strain. That is what we are working on,” says Singaravadivel.

While conventional wines are made by fermenting grapes and other fruits, the rice wine is produced by using fungal organisms to convert starch into sugar. This is fermented with yeast to produce alcohol. The process is similar to the one used by the Japanese to make sake.