Palinka - making of :)

Everyone who comes to Romania must try the strongest home-made alcohol in the country: Palinca or Palinka, in some places called Tuica (read: tzuika).
A small capture of the processing of it in the pictures below.

The process starts with collecting the fruits of which it is made (plums, apples, pears, peaches, etc.) and then leaving them to ferment for a long period, then, the liquid is collected and distilled, combined with water and maybe (not necessarily) sugar.
The distillation process is like a celebration for the romanian peasants that keep making the palinka, who usually gather around the boiling pot drinking and telling stories thus this stage of the palinka making takes many hours.
At the end they get to taste and adjust the taste of the palinka.
Its strength is measured in the pearls it makes when the glass is shaken... to many pearls means it's to strong, to little, it's no good. The right amount of pearls should be when they form a beautiful collar around the glass leaving the middle empty just as you can see in one of the pictures below.

The final moment, puting the palinka for safe keeping in bottles and canisters. The kids are curious about what happens so they keep their eyes on the show every single moment. One day, it'll be their turn to make palinka...maybe, only if these traditions don't get to die due to the newly European customs and regulations.
Apparently from now on the peasents are not allowed to sell their home made productions of milk, cheese, eggs, palinka or wine without making them pass thru a farm or an accredited distillery. That is the biggest error mankind can make because these are the real goodies in life, that's the real non-chemical, non-dangerous food! Anything processed industrially is no longer pure, no longer natural.
So...dear friends, enjoy these things while you still can because it seams it's the sunset of the natural products of the peasants and of a lifestyle, maybe of health itself (natural health, without medicine and food supliments and vitamins and all that).
The other bad thing is, these things used to define Romanians as a nation, these are the things that seam magic to everyone else in the world who comes to Romania. This is our way of being. What will we do without that? We'll get to be Americans in every way, not knowing to do anything, taking everything from a supermarket and dying at the age of 34 from the fat in our blood. No, not natural fat, cholesterol fat that came out of the industrially grown meat and vegetables treated with thousands of chemicals. Cheers to the new world! ... if you can accept it. I can't!

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to read the new post about an 86-year old winemaker here.