You Can Make Your Own Bordeaux At Home Thanks To This Taiwanese Invention

One of the advantages of being a journalist is that sometimes you can drink at work and call it “research”. That’s what I was thinking when Taiwanese startup Alchema gave me a taste of their new home made Dragon Eye fruit wine.

It was a light (only 5%) refreshing wine for a scorching Taipei Summer day although really sour. But as a native from a World Heritage wine region in Portugal, I tried not to demand too much of a wine that only took eight days to make.

Alchema is planning to offer you the possibility to create your own wine at home.You just need to buy the company specialised 3L bottle for US 300 (9,300 NT), download their app and think what kind of fruit you want to use besides the orthodox grape.

The app will then give you all the instructions of how to mix the ingredients in the bottle (you can buy the yeast from Alchema) and allows you to monitor the fermentation progress during the 1 or 3 weeks that usually takes to create.

“Our favourite is strawberry wine,” says Oscar Chang CEO and one of the co-founders” but there’s people who do it with Pineapple or Cherry.”

Its strange that an idea for this project came from an electric engineer and a filmmaking student, but it came up to Oscar and Angel Huang from a strange source, as great innovations normally do. More precisely the numerous unsuccessful attempts of a friend’s mother at producing her own wine.

After looking for a teacher with knowledge of wine fermentation, asking a friend with 3D printer to create the special fermentation bottle, Alchema was born.

“We didn’t have any knowledge about wine before but now we’re all alcoholics,” says Oscar.

Angel Huang COO second from the left and Oscar Chang CEO in the middle

They have only started with a 30,000NT capital last May , but in two months already gathered a ten people team and have been having fun winning innovation competitions.

They won US 4800 (150,000 NT) at the Mediatek Mobile Heroes, and were recently one of the best 5 teams chosen at the FITI government competition, winning US 64,000 (2 million NT).

For now the raised money will be used to develop their bottle prototype and the Alchema app, so if you have any ideas creating your own guava wine you’ll have to wait a bit.

The team is planning a crowdfunding campaign for February next year, aiming to raise US 440,000 (14 million NT) and assess the possible interest in the product. Because they know Taiwan is not a market with a big interest in wine, they’re planning to use Kickstarter, an american crowdfunding website, and target the US market, namely the world-renowned wine region of California.

You may think that somethings should be left to the professionals, but as wine lover what would make you prouder than offering your own batch during your wine parties? Just don’t make it Dragon Eye fruit wine, there some reasons why grapes have been used for wine since the beginning of time.

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