Agriculture Business Week

Federico’s Bignay Wine from Victorias City in Negros Occidental bagged the top prize in the Best Bignay Wine category of the Tropical Wine Competition hosted by the Department of Science and Technology South Luzon Cluster on November 11, 2009 at SM City Sta. Rosa City, Laguna.

Federico’s Bignay Wine bested six other finalists in its category which drew entries from several regions in the country. Dielle’s Bignay Wine from National Capital Region and Goyena’s Bignay Wine from CALABARZON placed second and third, respectively.

Federico’s Bignay Wine is produced by Federico’s Island Wine which produces all-natural and organic wines made from wild berries. This bignay wine has a rich, fruity flavor and aroma. It is clear and dark plum in appearance and has 13 percent alcohol content achieved through natural fermentation.

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A wine producer in Candelaria, Quezon has come up with premium quality fruit flavored lambanog to enhance the local wine’s market potential here and abroad.

Dory’s Distillery, Inc. takes pride in its newest creations called “Lambalites.” These fruity lambanog that look like imported fruit juices at first glance contain 22 percent alcohol and come in strawberry, blackberry, melon, and bubblegum flavors.

Contained in attractive bottles designed by Design Center of the Philippines, these fermented saps of unopened coconut flowers have attracted local and foreign drinkers of alcoholic beverages. The distillery’s earlier products Organic Lamba (45 percent alcohol). Vicente Uno (45 percent alcohol), LambaJack (40 percent alcohol), Varique raisin flavor (40 percent alcohol) have also won the interests of drinkers.

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Most people, when they talk about cashew, refer only to the nuts. Perhaps this is due to the growing popularity of cashew nuts as snack food and an ingredient in baked products, so it is considered as the most important product from cashew.

Palawan is considered the cashew capital of the Philippines, supplying 90 percent of the country’s nut requirement. In Roxas, for instance, there are 1,161,576 fruit-bearing trees producing an average of 13,938 metric tons of nuts.

Due to the abundance of this fruit, cashew is the major One-Town, One-Product (OTOP) of Palawan. OTOP is 1 priority program of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to promote entrepreneurship and create jobs by promoting a specific product or service with competitive advantage in each city and municipality. And for this program, Palawan has planted 24,300 hectares to cashew in 2004.

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Did you know that George Clooney has given Tom Cruise Filipino-made fruit wines as wedding gift?

This is a fact that Filipino wine makers should be proud of, for in spite of France, Italy, and Spain, the world’s top three wine exporters, Clooney has chosen the Mijiah Tropical Fruit Wines of Elbert Pigtain, a multi-awarded Filipino fruit wine exporter.

He started the Tropical Fruit Winery Corp. and Oriental Synergies Export Corp. in 2003. And even though the Philippines is not known as a wine producing country, he has been able to ship his bignay (wild berry) wine, duhat (plum) wine, guyabano (sour sop) wine, mango wine, as well as fruit preserves and syrups in high end-markets in U.S. and Europe.

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Agrarian Reform is not only about giving lands to beneficiaries. It is also about extending support services and providing product development training to beneficiaries in the rural communities for them to have alternative source of income.

The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has been instrumental for some rural developments by providing livelihood opportunities to a number of people and organizations in the rural areas.

One of them is the Kayabang Multipurpose Cooperative in Bayabas, Sablan, Benguet which has found a money-making venture in making ubi wine through the help of DAR-Cordillera Administrative Region. Ube wine was one of the saleable items at the recently concluded Agrilink/Foodlink/ Aqualink trade fair at the World Trade Center because it is organic, local, and healthy alternative to red wine.

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