Ladora Winery — Attraction in Da Lat City

Now I have a reason to go to Dalat! I just tasted fermented grapefruit juice (or is that grape fruit?) from Ladora Winery and boy am I impressed. I generally do not drink any alcohol, but a couple times per year, on a special occasion in the company of family and friends I do like fermented drinks of under 1% from any grain, fruit, fungus or vegetable. I am big on probiotics: Polish sauerkraut and Turkish pickles throughout the year. 'Just what the doctor ordered'.

The label reads 'under 5%" but the salesgirl told me verbally under 1%. Sure tastes more like a fruit juice naturally fermented than even homemade apple cider which is I believe 4-6%.

Anyway, a kind, friendly and modest saleswoman at the entrance to Mega in HCMC was offering samples, and I was hit by nostalgia of my youth. It tastes like the beginnings of 'sima', a homemade seasonal fermented citrus juice (I had used grapefruit) according to traditional recipe from Finland. That is typically 0.5-0.8% alcohol. I had several bottle explode in my basement in 1970 during my teenage experiment because the shelf height was inadequate enough room for cork movement due to carbon dioxide. Nature and time makes the drink. It is very simple.

Very mild. Hardly an alcoholic beverage, very tasty. Tastes more like a health food... But I was fooled. Smelling no characteristic aroma or taste of ethanol I drank half a bottle in five minutes. Too much for a habitual non-drinker. I recommend tea totalers have 50 of 100 ml instead and with food. Got a slight buzz which was not my intention. Had to take some peanuts onboard to quell the noticeable but minor effects on pulse and presumably blood pressure. Abstainers of five lay Buddhist vows and Muslims take note. You cannot be a little bit pregnant.

Conclusion: if you are going to drink alcohol, this is as minimal a start as you can imagine. Peanuts did the job to buffer the token alcohol. Could even have been my imagination that there was any psychoactive effect. Certainly less than coffee, albeit as a nervous system depressant rather than stimulant. My digestive system counter-acted the nervous system effect within ten minutes. So...

This is not a review of the winery, but rather a brutally honest take on Ladora. This is coming from someone who loves wine and has sampled wine all over the world. Hopefully someone at the winery will read this because I truly wish them success, but they need some serious feedback. First and foremost, you need to build a team of western wine experts. This team will help you properly market and distribute your wine. You need to hear the hard truth - your basic white wine is currently terrible. You either need to end production of your basic wine or figure out how to improve it. The Export White is barely passable and it should be cheaper for the quality of it. Second, and most importantly, you need to consider adding a vintage to the wine. This is primarily due to your poor management of store inventory. How long has it been on the shelf? Is it good anymore? In the US, wine companies visit all their retail locations to educate the stores on how to safely store and move the product. In Vietnam, it appears that anyone can have your bottle of basic White wine, sitting in the sun, not temperature controlled for a few years before the next foreigner buys it and the wine has completely spoiled. This has happened so many times to us here. Frankly it has turned us off to your wine, as there are so many stores keeping old and spoiled wine on the shelves. You do not gain more customers by selling spoiled wine. You need to get out there and educate your retailers on how to manage their wine inventory. White wine in Vietnam should be stored immediately in the refrigerator and removed from inventory if it has not sold in 1-2 years at most. If it is not temperature controlled, it needs to be sold in 6 months or less and absolutely stored away from sunlight. We came here in 2018 and found your wine quite drinkable, even the basic white, however on this return trip in 2022, we feel that we are drinking spoiled wine that has been sitting on the shelf for ages. It will take work, but we hope that you can figure out how to manage these issues and build your brand with...

Rather far from town. We had to charter a car to get there. You can also go there by scooter. We booked through winetourism website which required us to pay half of the total amount as deposit and later another 120k per person on site.

It took only 15-20 mins for the whole tour. Wine cellar. A short video on the production which e harvesting fermentation etc. That concluded the actual tour. Then we moved on to wine tasting. 3 different types wine from different brands.

The wine tasting felt a little rush. Overall it’s a rather underwhelming tour. Our guide Ricky was informative and friendly. Perhaps can be a little more proactive in providing...