A popular Mauritian drink is alooda, sold on the streets and in markets by energetic salesmen praising their own product. It consists of dissolved, boiled china grass (agar agar) and sugar, which has been strained and allowed to set and then grated, to which is added water, milk, rose syrup and soaked tookmaria (falooda) seeds.
As you would expect, beer, wine and spirits are far more expensive in hotels than they are in local shops.
Beer At the beginning of the 1960s, Pierre Hugnin listened to the suggestion of a friend from Tahiti that he should start a brewery. At the time, 18,000 hectolitres of beer were imported into Mauritius annually. While going into the figures for the project, Hugnin had the well water at his proposed site in Phoenix analysed and found it ideal.
The first Mauritian beer, Phoenix, was brewed by Mauritius Breweries Limited in August 1963. With beer seen as an acceptable drink in multi-religious Mauritius, MBL launched a second beer, Stella, two years later and began to distribute Guinness, which has been brewed under licence since 1975. Phoenix (5% vol) has become synonymous with beer for Mauritians and is the company’s bestseller. In 2003, MBL merged with another beverage firm to form the Phoenix Beverages Group The company now produces non-alcoholic beverages as well as an expanded range of alcoholic drinks, including Blue Marlin, a stronger beer (6% vol), Phoenix Special Brew (6.5% vol), Stella Pils (a lager) and Phoenix cider.
Mauritius beer has won many international awards for its quality, including Monde Selection gold medals for Blue Marlin (2007) and Stella Pils (2009). Mauritius sugar is used in the production of beer (where other breweries might use maize or rice) since it produces a beer that is more digestible. Top-quality hops come from Australia and Europe. The beer has a clean and refreshing taste with lots of flavour.
Spirits Almost 200 years ago, a commentator on Mauritius complained: ‘The facility with which spirits, especially arrack of inferior quality, are to be procured is more fatal to the soldiers than exposure to the sun, or any other effect of the climate.’
Rum-making on the island dates back to 1639, following the introduction of sugarcane by the Dutch, when it was made from cane juice even before people knew how to extract the crystals. Alcohol is now the most successful by-product of sugar, obtained by turning molasses into fine spirit.
There are many rums produced in Mauritius, including the romantic-sounding Green Island Rum. Most households and bars keep a variety of rhum arrangé, made by adding their own choice of fruit and/or spices to a large bottle of rum and leaving it to mature for a few months. The story of rum-making on the island is told at the Rhumerie de Chamarel.
Wine In a tasting of rosé wines from South Africa, France and Portugal conducted by a wine writer in South Africa a few years ago, a bottle of Château Bel Ombre featured well. It was determined by half the tasters as being South African in origin and by others as being from southern France or Portugal. Everyone was flabbergasted when they learned it came from Mauritius, produced by E C Oxenham & Co Ltd
The absence of vineyards in Mauritius has led sceptics to dismiss Oxenham’s wines as being obtained through the fermentation of Mauritian fruits. Not so. The wine is made from grape must, concentrated for travel, and imported into Mauritius in plastic blowpacks.
Edward Clark Oxenham, a descendant of British colonials, was a pioneer who tried to grow grapes on his farm in Rodrigues. He failed, but with help from the Pasteur Institute of Paris started to produce wine from dried grapes and local fruits in 1931. He moved to Mauritius and in 1932 founded the company that now bears his name.
Mauritian white and rosé wines can be drunk young, but the red is stored in oak vats to mature. The Oxenham range begins with Eureka, the everyday wine of Mauritians, through the pleasant and inexpensive Rosé Chaptalin, to finer wines with the St Nicholas label, as well as the full-bodied Mon Hussard red.
Wines produced in Mauritius have the added attraction for the drinker of their low retail price, although hotel or restaurant mark-up can increase the price by as much as five times.
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