

In Belize, the so-called “accessory fruit” is plucked, separated from the nut, and fermented into cashew wine.īecause cashew wine is made from fruit, it’s very sweet, with a viciously tart kick. seem to know that cashews grow from the bottom of a fruit and not directly from a tree like walnuts or almonds. Due to the dearth of fruit, few people in the U.S. Instead, it’s made from the cashew fruit, which is sometimes called a cashew apple (adding to the confusion, the cashew nut is not actually a nut, but a seed, so basically, what we’ve been eating all these years is a roasted, salted lie).Ĭashew fruit is highly perishable and extremely delicate, which might explain why they are incredibly hard to find in the U.S. The back shelf was lined with liquor there were tiny bottles of blackberry wine bitters made with palo de hombre (go ahead and Google that), soursop liqueur, craboo wine, locally-made one-barrel rums, Belikin beers, and, at last, cashew wine.Ĭashew wine is not made from the cashew nut that sits alongside craisins and coconut flakes in a bag of trail mix. Inside, the gas station looked like a typical truck stop. An hour later, we arrived at the sun-bleached Superstar gas station that sat along the paved highway that lead to Belize City.

I still wanted to try the wine and since Calbert apparently had nothing better to do, we set out to find the gas station. “I watch Ice Road Truckers and the way they have to move their steering wheel back and forth while the wheels slide-it’s just like that.”
Cashew station tv#
While he had never seen black ice in person-or snow, for that matter-he had seen it on TV and thought it was an apt comparison. “It’s like black ice,” said Francisco, a guide from San Ignacio.

Of course, everything in Cayo is a few miles down the road and it usually takes an hour or two to get there because the dirt roads require careful maneuvering, especially after a rainstorm. He found out that they were selling it at the gas station a few miles down the road. But my driver, Calbert, was sure he could find cashew wine elsewhere.Ī few days later we were bumping along the dusty road that wind through the Cayo district in western Belize when Calbert told me that he had asked around his village about cashew wine. They didn’t have many stores in the Mayan village set into the pine-covered mountains of Belize, just a tiny shop stocked with basic groceries and household supplies and a tortilleria selling warm corn tortillas out of a cut-out window a few hours each day. “The only thing that’s ready right now is cashew wine.” “They haven’t made it yet,” he said, laughing. He pointed at a young Mayan child pulling up carrots and handing them to an older boy who was putting them in a bag for storage, “They’re going to make carrot wine out of those.” I asked for details-or even better, a taste.
Cashew station driver#
in cashew were evolved and recommended.The driver was showing me around his village when he first mentioned it. Spraying schedules for the control of `tea mosquito', `stem borer' etc. Layering medium for air layering has been standardised.įertilizer schedule for cashew has been recommended. The techniques of epi-cotyl and `soft wood' grafting in cashew have been standardised. They are Madakkathara-1, Madakkathara-2, Kanaka, Dhanya and Priyanka. The All India Co-ordinated Cashew Improvement Project is functioning at this centre from 1973.įive cashew cultivars were released for cultivation from this centre. The lead function of the centre is research on cashew. The total area of the farm is 47ha (22.25ha planted with cashew and 1ha under building and roads). The station is situated at a distance of 1.50km away from Mannuthy on the left side of Mannuthy -Chirakkakode road. The Cashew Research Station, Madakkathara is located in Madakkathara Village of Trichur taluk in Trichur district. Presently this is one of the eight Centres of the All India Co-ordinated Cashew Improvement Pro-ject. The Cashew Research Station, Madakkathara under the Kerala Agricultural University was established on 01-05-1973.
