What it is
Winter melon tea (冬瓜茶) is made from winter melon, a large, mild gourd, cooked for hours with brown sugar or caramel. The basic drink has no tea in it. It is brown, sweet and served cold. Winter melon is traditionally thought to clear internal heat.
Where it came from
Tainan's makers carry much of the drink's history. Yi Feng (義豐冬瓜茶), opposite the Sacrificial Rites Martial Temple (祀典武廟), traces its family business to a winter melon factory founded in 1912. Part of the demand came from people buying the drink as offerings to the gods. A 2012 TVBS report says Tainan had more than ten makers at the trade's peak in the 1980s, and that by the 1990s only the Lin family's was left. The father who had run it at its height saw no future in it. His son carried on, adding lemon, tapioca pearls and sweet-potato balls, and customers came back through word of mouth.
Another Tainan maker, Liang Jiao Yin (兩角銀, "two dimes"), takes its name from the price of a cup at the time of the switch to the New Taiwan dollar.
How it is made
The melon is peeled, seeded and cut up. Some makers first soak the pieces in slaked lime to firm the flesh. The melon then simmers with brown sugar or caramel for many hours, and the liquid is strained. The concentrate is diluted with water and ice, or boiled down further and set into blocks (冬瓜磚) for dissolving at home. Melons from Xiluo in Yunlin are favoured in summer, and those from Hualien and Taitung in winter.
How to eat it
Drink it cold from a drinks stand or an old shop, plain or mixed. Common additions are lemon, kumquat, green or oolong tea, tapioca pearls and nata de coco. Bricks of the concentrate are sold to make at home.
Around Taiwan
- Tainan
- Yi Feng, by the Martial Temple, boils its syrup by hand in big wooden vats and makes winter melon candy only around Lunar New Year.
- Kaohsiung
- In Yancheng, Grandma's Marble Soda Mixed Tea (阿婆彈珠汽水綜合茶) has spent more than 50 years mixing winter melon tea with kumquat-lemon plum tea and marble soda in one cup.
