Naru brews a heady Wain wine

By LARRY ANDREW

HARDWORK is rewarded when one puts his hand to the soil and sweats to appreciate abundance in talent, wisdom and the blessings from the Creator.
Former Morobe Governor has learned to utilise these opportunities as best as
he could.
After a stint in the highest office of the biggest province (in terms of population) Naru has put his hand into the ground to grow grapes at the backyard of his home in Boana station, in Wain, Erap LLG, Nawaeb district. Boana is about two hours drive from the capital Lae and 45 minutes from the Erap junction near Nadzab Airport.
The lawyer-turned-politician now enjoys tending his grapes at home after his political tenure from 2012 to 2017. He also owns and operates the Boana Guesthouse.
The guesthouse offers accommodation, meals and assorted beverages, including the Kasiga Classic wine or KC in short.
It took a year for the former governor to grow grapes after buying seedlings at the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) show at Bubia in 2015. After another year of carefully trimming and giving them a little tender loving care, the vines began to produce healthy bunches of grapes for Naru to start the wine making process. He started harvesting in 2016 and has so far done five harvests.
“Every year the yield is increasing and every time I am learning the techniques of pruning and giving the grape-vine the tender loving care it requires,” Naru beamed.
At the National Planning Consultative Summit at Lae International Hotel from March 20 to 22, Naru and his group displayed brewed products from the grapes and other tropical fruits.
He told The National in an interview that the wines on display were brewed from tropical fruits and one brand among the rest was labeled Kasiga Classic and was brewed from the grapes at his backyard.
Kasiga Classic wine has become the local choice distilled not only as a beverage but also as a healthy drink, as it contains a mixture of tropical fruits and edible root plants like ginger.
“It’s a cottage industry and is catching up very fast at its infant stages at the moment. And we are going into a unique agriculture product that has never been tried before in the province basically manufacturing of grapes into wine.
“It’s very exciting and a lot of people love the product we are selling. Law and order-wise, it has contributed in minimising homebrew activities. Lots of our youths are now basically happy with what they are taking from our wine.”
The wines are selling at very reasonable prices and are catching on nicely among consumers but for a pioneering cottage industry in the province it needs to increase production and capacity.
The former governor is hoping that the government would be prepared to listen to and assist not only him but all farmers in the province and take seriously what they are doing.
“We can actually contribute to agriculture at the community level in a meaningful way and not listen to paper farmers who push and shove their papers around the corridors at Waigani. Come to the community, come to the province and see what we are doing then you can meaningfully assist,” Naru says.
“Like I said, it’s a backyard cottage industry in its infant stages; we just need to develop it.
“So from our latest harvest we started producing wine from the grapes. Apart from grapes we also use lots of other tropical fruit varieties in the province to make tropical wine. We could definitely do with government support in our industry.”
Tropical Wine products come in 275ml and 2L bottles. The smaller bottle is selling a retail price of K5 while the 2L sells at K30 which is a fairly reasonable.
Tropical Wine contains 15 per cent alcohol and the 275ml bottle is equivalent to three bottles of beer. Little wonder then young people especially love it for it comes at a liklik prais but gives bikpela hamamas