Maponya and Marula Wine

In June 2008 I went to a funeral in the township of Lenyenye (Lynn-yain-yay)with my family from Metz. It was a pretty interesting day... starting about an hour before the sun rose and lasting until mid-afternoon when I found myself trying to stay awake the whole taxi ride back home. The Phokungwanes from Metz had hired a taxi for the trip and the plan was to meet it on the main road around 5am. Yes. I remember standing on the side of the road for a good hour or so, shivering from the cold, and feeling more and more awake as the sun rose over the mountains in front of us. Finally the taxi showed up around 6 and after stopping for petrol we were on our way. MmaDiapo and I managed to find ourselves in the last two seats in the very back and pretty much slept the whole ride to the church. When we got to Lenyenye and parked, everyone shuffled out of the taxi, but MmaDiapo stated that the church looked too full and she wasn't interested in standing and being smushed with a ton of people throughout the whole service (a woman after my own heart!)... so we stayed in that back seat of the taxi for a good two hours and had a nice conversation about politics, America, South Africa, funeral customs in the different cultures, and the grieving process, with our taxi driver. After the funeral we went to the family's house for lunch and I talked to a few different people before going into hiding on a side porch with some cold drink and my family. When we headed home that afternoon the taxi driver asked me if I had any questions about South African culture. I told him I had a lot and my latest interest was trying to figure out what the colors of the flag represented. Fast forward a month or two later when I came home from work and found a piece of cardboard stuck inside my door. Yep, a breakdown of the colors of the flag and what they all meant. Now, fast forward a little more to 2009 when I was walking home after work one afternoon. A taxi slowed next to me and there was the same driver again... asking if I had any other questions about South Africa. I told him once again that there was a lot I wanted to know, but at the time I was really interested in the making of Marula Wine. He said he would get on the answer. I saw him by the taxi rank in town a week later and he said he would deliver my answer soon. The next week I walked into Kodumela and Rejoice handed over a two page description of how Marula wine is made.... and there was a recipe for Pineapple Beer as an added bonus. That day, by coincidence, I walked to the post office and ran into him coming out of the shop next door. He asked if I had the recipes with me because he wanted to explain things, wasn't sure his English was good enough for me to understand. We stood at the bus stop for 15 minutes as he went through the pages he had written explaining, and sometimes acting out, every step in the Marula Wine making process. I told him I would share all this information with you... and report back if anyone at home tried the Pineapple Beer recipe. So here you go.. the recipes and some pictures of Marula season in Metz.... if you can think of anything I should ask him for his next assignment, I'm all eyes.

Here's my pal Maponya.

How to Make/Prepare Marula Beer by Maponya
*No picking from the tree, the Marula will fall on the ground by itself to show that they are ripen
*The color will be light green but some yellowish.
Day One
1. Collect Marula from the tree as many as you can
2. Put Marula together until they change the colour to yellow that shows that you can prepare to make Marula Beer
3. Use big bucket or bowl to prick/squeese the seeds and the juice. The juice is sweet. Use a table fork.
4. Throw the outer layer/skin and leave the seeds, juice, and pulp in the bucket or bowl.
5. Separate the seeds and the juice. Juice in one bucket, seeds in the other.
6. Add water in the bucket with the seeds and mix by clean hands until the sweetness are removed from the seeds and then throw away the seeds. Add 9kg of water bit by bit in the bucket. Stay busy mixing and taste by mouth if it is sweet, if it is, stop.
7. Mix the first juice with the second juice mixed with water in a big bucket and close tide (tight).
Day Two
1. Open and remove the top layer by hand or anything that will remove the top layer without taking any beer.
2. Close tide (tight) again.
Day Three
1.Open and taste the Marula Beer.
Some people drink Marula Beer while sweet (it's juice at that point), but many need to drink sour.

Pineapple Beer
1. Boil 25Lt of water in a tin or anything
2. Add 2kg of brown sugar in boiling water
3. Stir until sugar is dissolved in water
4. Cool down the water (lukewarm)
5. Mix pineapple chunks from 1 or 2 pineapples and two pieces brown bread
6. Close the bucket or tin after mixing.
Day Two
Open the lid you will see the pineapple beer boiling as if there is fire or something burning from the bottom. Some enjoy when sweet but majority of people like it when it is sour. Use a tea sift to sift beer.
This is what the Marulas look like on the tree. When they're ripe they turn a soft yellow color and fall off the tree.. this year I didn't see any ripe ones because they were all picked and taken to ripen for the wine.

From January to March the shortcut path from the Taposa Bakery parking lot to Kodumela ADP is full of people. If you're brave enough or have the patience to deal with people who are pretty drunk... you can walk that way... most people choose to walk on the tar road. Last year, when I was a rookie, I walked through there and actually ended up participating in the cultural exchange. I bought a mayonnaise jar full of wine for r3 (about 30 cents) and shared it with a gogo who happened to be sitting next to me. I think I drank about half and when I stood up, I was good and drunk. Nothing like having such a cultural exchange at 1 in the afternoon and then heading back to the office. People found it pretty amusing.


Some women make wine all throughout the season and set up shop under the trees to make their money. It's rare that you see women drinking in public. Here I am drinking some of the wine out of a traditional ladle... it's made out of a hollowed out squash/pumpkin.

And here's a business woman makin' her money for the day.
A couple of tidbits about the Marula tree:
*Elephants are big fans of Marulas, they ram into the tree to knock the fruit to the ground, this is why the Marula was nicknamed the "Elephant Tree".
*Amarula cream liqueur is well known all over the country (and according to their website it can be found in 70 countries worldwide). To make Amarula the fruit is fermented , distilled, and then matured for two years in oak casks for about 2 years. It is then mixed with cream and bottled. In my opinion, it is best served over ice.