Commune leader reviving Van Son purple garlic variant

The commune secretary's thoughts

“In the old days, every time my mother fried shallots and garlic, a fragrant aroma would drift from the kitchen up to the main house. Nowadays, when you buy giant garlic bulbs at the market and fry them until the edges are charred, you still can't smell anything. Could it be that garlic today has become 'bland'? No, it's just because you haven't tried Van Son purple garlic yet. This is a primitive, ancient garlic variant that has never been crossbred to increase yields. It fully preserves the intensely fragrant 'gene' of the past. The cloves are small, requiring a bit of meticulous peeling, but once crushed... oh my! The essential oils burst out, the pungent scent rushes up the nose, awakening all senses. Boiling a hill chicken, mixing a bowl of dipping sauce with purple garlic, adding a bit of wild dổi seeds, and grilling chili... that is the true taste of memory, the true taste of family happiness. Don't let your meals become dull due to low-quality spices. Try Van Son purple garlic immediately; guaranteed to be pungent, fragrant, and bold down to the very last clove,” Mr. Tu introduced.

Mr. Nguyen Duy Tu, Secretary of the Party Committee of Van Son Commune, Phu Tho Province, further explained to me that beyond the genetic factor, the soil conditions of the steep hills and mountains combined with the cold climate, featuring several months enveloped in fog each year, have helped the garlic bulbs here accumulate a large amount of essential oils, yielding an exceptionally delicious quality. Van Son borders Mai Chau, a place renowned for Pu Bin purple garlic, and shares similar soil and climate conditions; their variants might even be one and the same.

His stories reminded me of my two trips traversing winding, foggy mountain passes to reach Pu Bin nearly 20 and 10 years ago, driven in part by the delicious flavor of kitchen-hung purple garlic bulbs; once you have eaten it, all other kinds of garlic seem bland.

However, the Secretary of Van Son Commune also frankly admitted that in recent times, locals have chased yields, introducing many garlic varieties from elsewhere for cultivation, meaning they no longer focus much on growing the local variety. Therefore, the commune has established a plan to rehabilitate the purple garlic variant, along with several other indigenous plants and animals of Van Son, such as wild chili and ancient rice varieties, to develop the local economy for residents and to provide products for tourists.

Both a spice and a medicine

I went to Ho hamlet of the former Bac Son commune to visit the Van Son Commune Green Development Agricultural Cooperative, newly established by Mr. Ha Van Dien in March 2026. He shared that the people of Pu Bin and Van Son are unclear about the origins of the purple garlic plant, knowing only that generations of elders have seen it around forever.

To the Muong people, garlic is both a spice and a precious medicine. If chickens or ducks get the flu, simply crushing a few small cloves of garlic into their mouths keeps them alive; if a person gets the flu, chewing a few cloves clears it up. For instance, Mr. Dien eats an average of one purple garlic bulb every day, so he never has to take Panadol for colds or flu year-round. Many people in Ho hamlet share this habit. Not only that, whenever they head into the forest or travel on the road, they also keep 1-2 cloves of garlic in their pockets to ward off toxic air.

In the past, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Tan Lac District, Hoa Binh Province (former) once supported the locality in building the Bac Son purple garlic brand, hoping it could become a spearhead economic crop. However, that brand eventually faded away because when locals expanded the garlic cultivation area but could not sell it, they reverted to small-scale self-production and self-consumption. In the Ho, Hay Tren, Hay Duoi, and My hamlets of the former Bac Son commune, almost every household grows garlic; households with less plant 5-10 kg of seeds, while those with more plant up to 30kg of seeds, such as the households of Mr. Bui Van Bien, Mr. Bui Van Danh, and Mr. Ha Van Xich.

The terraced fields here used to grow rice, but due to a lack of water over the past 15-20 years, they have transitioned to dry crops, cultivating corn and peanuts in the spring and garlic in the autumn, with harvests in January of the following year. For every seed clove planted at the end of the season, one bulb is harvested, meaning 1kg of seeds yields 7-8kg of commercial garlic; residents hang them in the kitchen, partly for household use and partly to sell for pocket money.

The specific cultivation practice for purple garlic among the people of Van Son is as follows: In the middle of August, they till the soil, form 1.2m-wide beds, and plant the crops 15-20cm apart, fertilizing entirely with only livestock manure and kitchen ash. Once planted, the garlic is not watered, sprayed with plant protection chemicals, or fertilized with chemical fertilizers; it grows solely by absorbing nutrients from the soil and drinking the night dew on the mountains. Fortunately, this crop possesses strong natural resistance; it rarely suffers from pests or diseases under normal conditions, only experiencing leaf scorch when there is heavy frost. Therefore, the quality of purple garlic here is even more organic than certified papers.

“Currently, the purple garlic area in Ho hamlet spans about 5-6 hectares, and will soon be expanded to 7-8 hectares as we aim to develop it into an OCOP product. To achieve that, we must first secure a market outlet for purple garlic at a worthy and stable price. Up until now, farmers have had to bring their garlic to Bo market, Man Duc market, and Phu Cuong market to sell, the nearest being 10km away and the furthest around 30km away, yet they only fetch 80.000 - 100.000 VND/kg because there is no brand at all,” Mr. Ha Van Dien expressed his concerns.

This is entirely true, as searching on Google only brings up Ly Son garlic, Son La garlic, and Pu Bin garlic, with no trace of Bac Son garlic or Van Son garlic outside of the Facebook post titled “Longing for the old garlic taste, tracing the aroma of the old kitchen, when a single clove of garlic is enough to scent the whole village” by Commune Secretary Nguyen Duy Tu.

Taking down several bundles of black, smoke-stained garlic from the kitchen rafters, Ms. Bui Thị Xuan, a resident of Ho hamlet, peeled them to reveal creamy white, deeply aromatic cloves inside, explaining to me: “The Muong people rarely use shallots but are accustomed to using garlic. Every single one of our dishes features garlic, whether it is crushed for dipping sauce, stir-fried with chayote, squash, or meat, or used to marinate buffalo meat for grilling… Simply crushing a few cloves of Van Son purple garlic lets you smell the aroma immediately. When eaten raw, it is delightfully fragrant and intensely pungent; when cooked, it delivers a rich, savory flavor. Even blindfolded, I could still recognize it. Moving forward, if the cooperative finds a stable market outlet for purple garlic, our people will definitely expand the cultivation acreage.”

After harvesting the garlic and drying it, the people of Van Son usually hang them in large bundles above the kitchen hearth. The rising kitchen smoke coats the garlic, helping preserve it for up to a entire year while enhancing the appeal of its flavor when consumed.