Making the Lorax jealous
"I sip from the trees." How to make arrack, one of the world's oldest spirits
Hello and welcome to One More Round, a newsletter for exploring the world of beverages! Today we’re going to the island of Sri Lanka for a two-part series about arrack.
When Lionel Christy Fernando wakes up in the morning, there’s one thing that’s always in the back of his mind: don’t fall out of a tree today. He’s also keen to avoid being stung by bees or bitten by a snake. Getting struck by lightning is not high on his list either.
They’re all occupational hazards for the toddy tappers of Sri Lanka—a centuries-old craft that combines the delicate balance of a tightrope walker with an attention to botanical detail that would make the Lorax jealous. Working in the tops of spindly coconut palms, whose fronds wave languidly in the trade winds that blow across the island, toddy tappers are responsible for collecting the milky white coconut palm juice used to make one of the oldest spirits in the world.
Lionel is a toddy tapper. He has the slight build of a jockey and a surprisingly calm demeanor for someone who spends hours clinging to a clump of leaves dozens of feet off the ground. When I met him in 2018, the 48-year-old had been working in the tops of coconut palms for the better part of two decades. Practically dancing, he climbs up a “ladder” built of coconut husks tied to a palm and then tiptoes along roughly woven coconut husk ropes strung between trees, collecting the palm’s sweet liquid from clay pots tied to green coconut inflorescences.
Those blossoms, which are usually hard to see from the ground, are actually composed of a spiky, flower-filled stem, called a spadix, surrounded by a hull-like spathe. Left to blossom, the spadix holds the flowers with their nectar and pollen—and eventually coconuts—as the spathe opens up and falls away. Toddy tappers, however, want to keep the blossom from opening so they can harvest the tree’s nectar.
Lionel’s day at the coconut grove, one of many situated less than a mile from the Sri Lankan coast along what some call the “toddy belt,” starts with honing his hand sickle using some grit and a tree branch. High overhead, dozens of coconut inflorescences are tightly bound with rope. Some are already weeping nectar, others are almost ready for their first tapping.
Each morning Lionel climbs into the grove’s canopy and collects the coconut tree’s sweet harvest, sometimes as much as two liters of juice per blossom. A well-maintained coconut palm grove of 600 to 700 trees will produce around 400 liters of toddy a day. Tappers can move between some 150 trees a day.
After pouring the day’s catch into a plastic jug tied to his waist, Lionel pulls out his impossibly sharp hand sickle from a rope belt and shaves less than an inch off the end of each closed blossom. Then he moves along a rope tied between trees, dozens of feet off the ground, and begins again at the next tree.
The “tapping” part of Lionel’s job comes from the wooden mallets used to gently tap the bound coconut spathe, a green sheathing protecting the yet-to-bloom coconut flower. He taps the spathe to open the plant’s capillaries and keep its juices flowing. A series of firm thumps from his tamarind wood mallet is enough to convince the tree to pump nectar from its roots and leaves into the shaved spathe and spadix, sending sugary liquid into the clay pot tied tightly around the cut.
Once in the morning and once in the late afternoon Lionel wields his mallet, applying a pressure similar to that of a massage therapist. He needs to be careful, tapping just hard enough to stimulate the flow of nectar but not so hard he splits the blossom’s hull.
The nectar that fills the pots, called raa in Sri Lanka, is so sweet and yeasty that the region’s tropical heat triggers spontaneous fermentation, turning nectar into “toddy,” a tropical coconut drink with an alcohol content of 7% to 8%. If it isn’t consumed, or distilled, quickly enough, a runaway reaction turns it into vinegar.
The toddy tapped by Lionel is destined for a distillery owned by Rockland Distilleries, where it will be converted into a spirit Sri Lankans call arrack. Arrack has been around for a long time. Just how long? Find out by subscribing…
(Here’s a hint though: it’s older than the first written account of Scotch.)
