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Alcoholic drinks from Chiapas, Mexico

Taberna (coyol palm wine, Chiapas)taberna

Taberna is the palm wine of Chiapas, made from the sap of the felled coyol palm. A cavity is cut into the top of the trunk, sap seeps into it and ferments there on its own, and it is scooped out and drunk over about two weeks of tapping. Zymomonas bacteria and wild yeasts do most of the work.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks5 days – 20 daysFamily: Palm wine (base flow)

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo recipe. One felled palm is tapped for about 15 days, and the sap ferments in the trunk cavity as it collects.
A felled coyol palm (Acrocomia aculeata)The growing tip (shoot apical meristem) is cut out and a cavity made where the sap collects; the cavity is covered to keep insects out[ojeda2021][oluwole2023]
Coyol palm sapNothing is added; the sap ferments in the cavity where it collects[ojeda2021][santiago2015]
No starterThe yeasts arrive in the sap by chance, carried by different vectors, and the sap is fermented over 12-hour feeding cycles in the canoe[santiago2015]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 5 days – 20 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: The palm is felled and a cavity is cut where its growing tip was

Step 1 of 3
Fell the palm and cut the cavity
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Zymomonas mobilis
Zymomonas
Lactobacilli
Acetobacter pasteurianus

Output: open cavity in the trunk.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Taberna is the palm wine of Chiapas, made from the sap of the felled coyol palm. A cavity is cut into the top of the trunk, sap seeps into it and ferments there on its own, and it is scooped out and drunk over about two weeks of tapping. Zymomonas bacteria and wild yeasts do most of the work. Made in 3 steps over 5 days – 20 days. The longest step, sap collects and ferments in the cavity, takes 12 h – 15 days (Santiago-Urbina J.A 2015). Zymomonas mobilis, 60–80 % of the bacterial community and Lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus nagelii, L. sucicola), from about 60 h do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step12 h – 15 daysReported[santiago2015]Sap collects and ferments in the cavity

What makes this one different

Unlike most palm wines, taberna is not tapped from a standing tree into a pot. The coyol palm is felled, and the sap collects and ferments in a cavity cut into the trunk itself.

Honduran coyol wine, sap temperature
Fermented coyol sap was collected at 35 °C in the Honduran study (not Chiapas taberna)
Honduran coyol wine, pH
pH 3.67–3.71 at the start of storage (not Chiapas taberna)
Honduran coyol wine, pasteurised in a lab trial
10 min at 75 °C kept the bottled wine stable for 28 days at 30 °C; 60 °C for 30 min was also tested. A trial, not traditional practice.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Coyol wine (Honduras)Coyol palm sap (Acrocomia aculeata) from Olancho, fermented spontaneously; studied as a bottled, pasteurised drink.

Safety

In the Honduran trial, E. coli and coliforms stayed below detection after pasteurising at 75 °C for 10 min. Unpasteurised taberna keeps fermenting and turns sour.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Taberna and the coconut-sap tuba were adopted in Mexico through Philippine influence during the Spanish colonial period, and both are still made in coastal and southern localities.

Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any step of Chiapas taberna.
  1. [ojeda2021] Ojeda-Linares C. et al. 2021, Traditional fermented beverages of Mexico: a biocultural unseen foodscape, Foods 10(10):2390paper
  2. [santiago2015] Santiago-Urbina J.A., Arias-García J.A., Ruiz-Terán F. 2015, Yeast species associated with spontaneous fermentation of taberna, a traditional palm wine from the southeast of Mexico, Annals of Microbiology 65:287–296 (abstract)paper
  3. [alcantara2010] Alcántara-Hernández R.J. et al. 2010, The bacterial community in 'taberna', a traditional beverage of Southern Mexico, Letters in Applied Microbiology 51:558–563 (abstract)paper
  4. [gonzales2025] Gonzales-Santos M.J. et al. 2025, Physicochemical and microbiological characterization of pasteurized coyol wine (Acrocomia aculeata) from Honduras, Revista Facultad Nacional de Agronomía Medellín 79:e123640paper
  5. [oluwole2023] Oluwole O. et al. 2023, Fermented traditional wine from palm trees: microbial, nutritional attributes and health impacts, Frontiers in Food Science and Technology 3:1225762paper