I was visiting MacKenzie the other day in his village. I had heard that his host mom, Doamna Efemia, was making rachiu that day but I hadn’t seen her since arriving. On a trip to the veceu, I found her behind her barn with the strangest contraption I’ve seen in a long time.
Imagine, if you will, a small fire. Positioned above the fire is one of those industrial metal barrels. The barrel is full of wine and the wine is being heated to boiling point. Fastened on top of the barrel is a cover that has been strapped on and the gaps all sealed with cloth and tape. From out of this is a tube that connects to a pipe, so that all the steam and condensation is being forced into this pipe. The next part of the contraption is a second barrel that has been sawed in half and laid on it’s side, propped up by sawhorses, so it is really like a huge half-cylinder. It is filled with cold water The pipe from the first barrel runs through the cold water, which cools the steam inside of it. At the end of the half-barrel, the pipe terminates and there is a small amount of liquid trickling out of the pipe end unto a receptacle like a glass jar or another barrel.
This liquid is rachiu – the home-made hard alcohol that most Moldovans make from their leftover wine each year. Because pure alcohol has a higher condensation temperature than water, at the end of the pipe after the cooling water, the steam that was water is still steam and escapes into the air. The portion of the steam that was mostly alcohol has re-liquified and can be captured.
The proof of rachiu is not always known (not everyone measures it) but pretty much all rachiu would be illegal to sell in America due to it being completely toxic. It’s like moonshine. Doamna Efemia sometimes measures hers for proof and it’s somewhere in the 80-120 range. This is serious stuff.
Some Moldovans flavor their rachiu with nuts or fruit. This can help the flavor but, honestly, when the proof is that high you really can’t hide the bitter, harsh flavor of the stuff. Doamna Efemia’s favorite thing to do with her rachiu is to put it in jars and put lemon, garlic, pepper, and herbs in it, then to make people drink it whenever they are sick or going outside where it’s cold. She calls it “medicine” and treats it as such – you don’t drink it for pleasure, you drink it to medicate yourself. I can only have one tiny shot of the stuff, which I do to make Doamna Efemia feel better in the winter, but any more than that and I will have a burning sensation in my stomach all day and will be pretty buzzed after only half a shot. The stuff is NOT a joke.
Noapte Buna!
Wow, that’s what we were drinking huh? No wonder it tasted so strong. Perhaps it is a good medicine if it kills intestinal bugs and other nasty things one might get.
Lol okay, Ma, let me be more clear: It is a common belief among Moldovans that wine and hard liquor “disinfect” you. I respect this as a cultural practice – if it makes you feel better go ahead. That being said, there is absolutely no scientific evidence supporting this notion, in fact there is a large body of evidence showing that drinking alcohol at all when you’re sick can be dangerous because it lowers your immune responses. I’m not going to try and stop the Moldovans from “disinfecting” themselves anymore, though, because I recognize now that this is part of culture here. Studies have also shown that large doses of vitamin C, which Americans take when they’re sick, don’t actually make anyone feel better faster, except psychologically, so we do the same thing.
That being said, if you have intestinal PARASITES (which pretty much all of us living in Moldova do), then you really should NOT drink alcohol because it is converted to sugar and intestinal parasites love sugar. So there you go.