The Department of Agriculture (DA) has been providing assistance to ensure sufficient fruit supply for a local producer of internationally recognized wines.
Among the fruits used by Vino Arsan in their products are mango, calamansi, and dragon fruit.
“It helped that my father, my boss, he always had means to ask, kung wala kami makuha pupunta kami mismo sa DA ng probinsya,” Joshua Arthur Olarte said.
“Ang misconception is ang wine, grapes lang. But in reality, all the fruits in the country, we could turn into wine… So mainly, ang mission and vision namin is to propagate the vast abundance of fruits in the country and turn them into fruit wine,” he added.
Aside from bronze and silver medals, they have also bagged the gold medal under the berry fruit category of the 2018 Winemaker International Amateur Wine Competition in San Diego, California.
The enterprise’s fruit wines are also showcased during trade fairs of the DA, in line with the agency’s programs to promote Filipino products to the local market.
“We’re thankful na kahit paano tuloy-tuloy naman yung benta namin. Hindi kami commercialized. Kasi then again, we only produce what we harvest,” he said.
“We could still push people to plant, we could still explore places here wherein there is so much abundance of the Lipote and the Gugnay. There’s still so many local government units, also farmers we could help. So it’s a good problem,” he added. (PTV, DA)/AG-rir
