Lesotho’s own brandy

ROMA-“Go, eat your food with rejoicing, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for already the true God has found pleasure in your works,” so says the Big Book. Driven by that divine, Mohapi Pule has gone a step further – by coming up with a new type of brandy – to make you merry. The brandy, Mountain Spels Brandy, will make the heart of the dying man rejoice. “The healthy nutrients in fruits that make brandy, end up in you when you drink it,” he said. Pule studied nutrition at the National University of Lesotho. His brandy is made by fermenting fruits into wine. The wine is then distilled into a brandy. It carries the flavour and the aroma of the original fruits. The story began when Pule was born in Quthing, Mphaki. He was born to a hardworking mother who brew traditional beer like no other. “She brew beer well before I was born. She is still making it to this day,” he said. His passion for brewing was probably “born” even before he was born. Mothers have a hidden way of passing not just their looks but their passions to their children. As he grew up, he found that he was still intertwined with his mom’s brewing business in one way or another. “Mostly, I am expected to fetch water for the brewing process. That, I still do to this day when I visit home,” he says. Two decades later, Pule found himself in the Roma Valley, doing BSc in Nutrition. “At some point, I found that I had lost purpose in life. There was not a thing that I could say, well, I was passionate about this thing or that thing.” That situation, of course, threw him into some serious soul-searching. It brought him back to his roots. “During this period, I recalled that when I was younger, I used to imagine helping my mom do the packaging of the beer she was making and helping distribute it countrywide,” he said. From a young age, the issue of subsistence business didn’t appeal to him. But that imagination came and passed. Now here he was, worried that he might not amount to anything in life. Then, boom! An idea came! What if he produced an alcoholic drink? He could have thought about anything to do as a business but, lo and behold! He thought about his mother’s passion! One of the things he loves about alcoholic beverages is that they are popular. “I haven’t seen products as popular as alcoholic drinks,” he said. He might be wrong or right but the reality is, the rest of the world has for generations found delight in alcoholic beverages – some to the extent of overdoing it to their injury! “Mabele khunoana ralitlhaku thabisa lihoho. Mabele u tsoa kae e le khale re u batla re sa u thole? Ueeeena mabeeeele!” (Loosely translated beer brewed from sorghum make men happy. We’ve been looking for you from afar, you sorghum. In short, this is a praise poem for the Sesotho sorghum brew). But then came the most difficult part. Which specific beverages should he focus on and how would he do it? He decided that he would focus on ciders. He realised that not many people in Lesotho were making ciders. He started experimenting at home and realized how difficult the process was. He just couldn’t get it right. To worsen matters, he also did not have the right equipment. But like most successful innovators, he just knew that he had to start his business right away. Pule says he then learnt about other forms of beverages: the spirits. Spirits are very high in alcohol content. Here we are talking the likes of whiskey, vodka and brandy. He was particularly interested in vodka. He went into one NUL laboratory and, with necessary permission, began testing a number of spirits and doing a lot of research about them. He began saving some of the money he earned from the National Manpower Development Secretariat in the form of student allowance so he could buy equipment. Saving was not easy. The subsistence money was already not that much. Having to share it with a business was asking a little too much. But Pule was so determined that he did it, bought equipment that allowed him to develop what he thought was “vodka”. However, after buying the equipment he immediately realised that the equipment was to make brandy not vodka. “Now I was forced to get into brandy by chance,” he said. It was a mistake that he has never regretted having realised that there are very few individuals who were making brandy in Lesotho. Pule had to throw himself fully into experiments. He read books about brandy production. He even enrolled for an online course on distillation. In the end, he began to see some light. “I began to feel some difference in the taste of my produce,” he said. “When I shared my produce with my lecturers, they were over the moon!” With that encouragement, Pule began packaging his brandy and is now selling it to family and friends. “My small equipment means that I can’t produce much. However, If I were to get bigger equipment, things would be much better.” Own Correspondent