Tags: Bars, Beverages, Truly Pinoy Food and Drinks
By KC Santos
SAGADA, MOUNTAIN PROVINCE – It looks like your usual tourist-y store selling pasalubong items. But wait until the owner offers you a taste of their organic wine.
Gabay Fruit Wines is a pasalubong center-cum-bar and café. Its owner Sofia Kilongan, a distributor and wholesaler, thought of opening a place where she could display all their products.
But she ended up putting additional tables and chairs to cater to those who love their organic wines.
“It was just supposed to be a pasalubong center but then tourists just started coming in asking for the wines, which they end up drinking inside the store and we had to find a way to make them feel comfortable,” says Sofia’s daughter, Stephanie Robles.
Looking at the façade of the store, it really looks like a plain homey gift shop with all the stacked bottles of jams, wines and delicacies facing the road. But once you step in, you’re immediately welcomed by the smell of sweet spirits apparently being enjoyed by tourists lazing the night off with a few shots of wine.
Just like most houses in Sagada, the store is covered in iron sheets, the added insulation providing warmth. Of course, the wine helps fend off the cold.
As boring as it looks outside, it’s surprisingly very interesting inside. The place sports ethnic-inspired interiors that are in total contrast from the dull iron exterior. With only four long wooden chairs and two small tables right in between, you can tell things do won’t get rowdy; it’s ideal place to relax with some friends while sipping wine.
Stephanie muses about their uniquely-flavored wines like the Roselle Wine, made from a native flower picked from the Southern mountains of Sagada, their Lemon and Strawberry Wines and their own version of the Bignay Wine. At P75 to P130, tourists can either take this home or enjoy it over a good chat with friends in their cozy store.
Stephanie adds that their Honey, Pineapple and Strawberry Jams are all organic. In a place where these are all abundantly produced, I don’t find that hard to believe. These are sold for the same price as the wines.
In some occasions (if you’re lucky like I was when I was there), Stephanie serves her special home-baked Mulberry Cinnamon Cupcakes (P15 apiece). You can take this with you if you want to take away the smell of liquor on you on your way back to the hotel.
Stephanie says she and her mother are still working on other ways to maximize the resources that they have in their store. Gabay after all means “abundance” in the Kankana-ey language. Hopefully, on my next visit to Sagada, I’ll find their store bigger and loaded with more products.
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