Students Get a Taste of Kymyz

It smells a little like chloroform and pickles and tastes a lot like rotten eggs in olive brine, but kymyz, the fermented horse milk that is the national drink of Kyrgyzstan, brought the crowd in the International Affairs Building back for seconds Monday night.

The event, cosponsored by the Central Asia Group and the Eurasian Students Initiative, saw the tables in the School of International and Public Affairs lounge piled high with borsok (fried pastries), batyr-nan (crusty bread), and ikra (salmon caviar), all a mere prelude for the throng that bulged out the doors, waiting for the main event. The kymyz (pronounced koo-mis) was carried directly from Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, by students returning from SIPA's Economic and Political Development Workshop over winter break. The event, which organizers billed as the drink's first public tasting in the U.S., was designed to raise awareness of the former Soviet republic.

"We thought it would be a very good idea to share our heritage, let people know what it is," said Talant Sultanov, a second-year SIPA student who helped organize the event.

According to Sultanov, kymyz is traditionally made by pouring the milk into a leather bag and stirring it with a bishkek, a special wooden dowel that lends its name to the capital, and is only now being commercially produced. Served with all meals in a kese, a large bowl, it is also said to have enormous health benefits and was once used to treat the symptoms of tuberculosis.

The Soviet politburo took such a liking to the drink that it ordered a failed attempt to produce a powdered form. As for the horses, explains Sultanov, "Herding cows is very impractical, they're slow and they eat too much."

Poured well-chilled in shot-sized servings, the light, thin, and resoundingly sour drink was met with mixed reactions, from greedy delight to visceral appreciation to all-out rubbery-kneed revulsion.

"I don't think anything could help it," said recent SIPA and Business School alum Daniel Zaretsky gingerly draining his glass. "Although, it's not so bad that I wouldn't drink it to save my life."