In the last couple of years, te.gism, the “fruit with a dot in its name”, has caught the imagination of wine lovers in the Northeast who fancy non-grape elixirs. Also known as the Himalayan cherry ( Prunus jenkinsii ), this fruit that grows in the jungles of Meghalaya’s Garo Hills remained virtually unknown until botanists documented it less than a decade ago.
Today, it is cultivated by farmers in the region for the state’s burgeoning fruit winemaking industry. Lyang B. Sangma was understandably on edge when his te.
gism product was among six exotic fruit wines and meads — alcoholic beverages made by fermenting honey — chosen by the Meghalaya Farmers Empowerment Commission (MFEC) to showcase at the Vinexpo India 2024 in Mumbai this September. “I had my heart in my mouth whenever an expert or connoisseur sipped the te.gisim wine and rolled his or her tongue over it.
The reaction from almost all of them was that my product has possibilities beyond my hometown of Tura and other parts of Meghalaya,” says the entrepreneur. A post shared by Meghalaya Farmers' Empowement Commission (@megfarmerscommission) Situated on low hills, Tura is the economic and administrative hub of the western part of Meghalaya, dominated by the Garo community, and about 300 km west of state capital Shillong. Most Garo families are used to brewing bitchi , a smoky rice beer made from local sticky rice.
After observing elders do the fermentation process, Lyang began experimenting with other gr.
