Note 18 — Chapter XIV

102. The wine commonly used among them is either that made from palms, as it is throughout India, or from sugar-cane, which they call quilang. The latter is made by extracting the sap from the canes, and then bringing it to a boil over the fire, so that it becomes like red wine, although it does not taste so good. The palm wine is made by extracting the sap or liquor from which the fruit was to be formed. For as soon as the palm begins to send out the shoot from the end of the twig, and before the flower is unfolded, that flower-stock is cut, and a bit of bamboo is fastened to it and is tied to the stalk or shoot. Since the sap naturally flows to that part, as in the pruned vine, all the sap that was to be converted into fruit, flows into that bamboo, and passes through it to vessels, where, somewhat sour and steeped with the bark of certain trees which give it color, heat, and bite, they use it as a common drink and call it tuba. But the real and proper palm-wine is made from the same liquor before it turns sour, by distilling it in an alembic in ovens that they have prepared for it. They give it a greater or less strength, as they please; and they get a brandy as clear as water, although it is not so hot [as our brandy].18 It is of a dry quality, and, when used with moderation, it is considered even outside Filipinas as healthful and medicinal for the stomach and a preventive of watery humors and colds.