Snake Wine Review – Live from Hoi An, Vietnam.
Usually, here at FortyBeers.com I am in the habit of opening and sampling beers of various descriptions.
However, during my holiday in Vietnam, apart from some fantastic beers, I came across what looked like an interesting concoction….
Snake Wine.
Snake Wine is apparently a Vietnamese ” Elixir of Life ” – it allegedly cures everything from baldness to cancer to blindness, it is allegedly an aphrodisiac, it will predict the winning lotto numbers, and may or may not cook your lunch for you as well. Allegedly.
In Mexico, you have your Tequilla worm – a poor unfortunate little fella who happens to be dunked into a bottle of evil tasting local liquor.
Vietnamese Snake Wine is similar. In Vietnam, Snake Wine consists of a dead cobra in a bottle full of some kind of clearish/yellow spirit, which is left in the sun or on a shelf for probably far too long. Some of the bigger bottles have a scorpion as well as a snake, but these were a bit too expensive for my simple requirements.
I asked the market vendor “how much for a little bottle ?”.
“ Six Dollar”.
I paused, thinking to myself, “do I really want one”.
” Five Dollar”.
Still pausing, not because of the price, but because I was VERY unsure about this…
” Three Dollar !!” yelled the apparently desperate vendor.
Sweating from both the heat and the thought of drinking it, I asked “Two Dollars ?” , and the transaction was done.
Finding a little restaurant and asking my wife to hold the video camera, as my two daughters looked on in fear and amazement, I sampled what can only be described as one of the most disgusting tastes known to human kind…. or at least to me anyway. Describing the taste of Snake Wine as “kerosene mixed with rotting dead, fishy, snake with undertones of petrol and metholated spirits” is an understatement, and goes no-where near to what I actually tasted.
I absolutely loved the beers and the food that we ate in Vietnam. There were a few weird and wonderful tastes and smells that I probably wouldn’t need to have again, but my theory is “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”…. or the Vietnamese in this case. I ate far too much, drank too many beers, loved every minute of it, and it was all fantastic.
Except for the Snake Wine !!
Snake Wine gets a NEGATIVE 53 out of 10 on the Forty Beers Cheers O Meter.
You have been warned 
Thanks,
Matthew.
Tags: Vietnamese Beer
To try this snake wine, please visit http://www.123vietstore.com I do have them, very very rare.
Oh god! I hope they had more than one beer to wash that down!