Though wine is most often made using grapes, Winemaker Magazine explains that a plethora of other fermentable ingredients can be used as a base for your bottle of wine. But, as Nick Johnson reports for The Daily Meal, arguably the most unexpected wine base is a peculiar potato indigenous to Peru.
VinePair notes that high in the Andean mountains, a man named Manuel Choqque [also called the ‘potato whisperer‘] is transforming tubers into wine.
Choqque grew up in the mountainous Andes region in Peru and is the son of potato farmers. He stuck to the family business, and has since cultivated 90 new varieties of potato since 2014.
However, it’s oca, a tuber of over 900 Peruvian varieties, that Choqque uses to produce his wine (via Fine Dining Lovers). It was oca’s high sugar content — which, when fostered in the right condition, can produce an 11% to 12% ABV wine — that inspired him to turn it into alcohol.
According to VinePair, the potatoes used in the Miskioca rosé, red, and sweet white wines are fermented for eight months. The dry white’s potatoes ferment for four.
A source: https://www.potatonewstoday.com
