As South Africa starts to take wine exports to the Sinosphere seriously (Sawis reports sales of bottled SA wine in China up from 600K to 4.3 million over the last five years) the question for any eastern looking sommelier is what wine to recommend with virgin boy eggs. Especially with 300 000 Chinese tourists expected to visit SA this year.
The Cape Times reports this morning “in the eastern Chinese city of Dongyang… basins and buckets of boys’ urine are collected from school toilets. It is the key ingredient in ‘virgin boy eggs’, a local tradition of soaking and cooking eggs in the urine of young boys, preferably below the age of 10.” Urine from Dongyang being a felicitous combination enough to convince a marketer of the sense of appellation legislation.
Chinese culture lays great store by respect for the elderly, so the 2011 blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon from Elgin Vintners called The Century could just fit the bill. After all, another culinary delicacy is hundred year old eggs, so a hundred year wine seems most appropriate for egg dishes.
The Times goes on “the scent of these eggs, cooking in pots of urine, is unmistakable as people pass the many street vendors who sell it, claiming it has remarkable health properties” and quotes street vendors “’if you eat this, you will not get heat stroke. These eggs… are fragrant,’ says Ge Yaohua, who owns one of the more popular ‘virgin boy eggs’ stall.
‘Our family has them for every meal… every family likes eating them.’ Ge has been making the snack, popular due to its fresh and salty taste, for more than 20 years. Each egg goes for 1.50 yuan (R1.80), a little more than twice the price of the regular eggs he also sells. Many Dongyang residents, young and old, believe that the tradition passed on by their ancestors promotes better blood circulation and invigorates the body.”
A gourmet twist could be introduced by packing organic asparagus sandwiches for virgin schoolboys. Meanwhile “the local government lists the ‘virgin boy eggs’ as an intangible cultural heritage” of the Middle Kingdom. SA Sauvignon producers must be thanking their lucky stars South Africa is now a fully-fledged member of BRICSA, with sparkling new opportunities emerging for products we would previously flushed into False Bay.
