In sugarcane farming, there is a part of the stalk that is cut and returned to the earth. It is called patdan. From it, another crop grows.
For Jun Rodolf Jamora, the word once belonged only to the language of his father’s farm. As a child, he would often hear it in the hacienda, spoken naturally by a father who knew sugarcane not simply as a crop, but as work, inheritance, and a way of life. Jun did not fully understand the term then. His father would later explain it to him: the patdan is the part of the sugarcane planted back into the soil, allowing the cycle to continue.
Years later, that same word would become the name of a bottle, a business, and Jun’s own way of carrying forward what his father had begun.
Patdan Wine is a sugarcane wine from Negros. But its story begins long before fermentation. It begins in a province long known as the Sugar Bowl of the Philippines, where sugarcane has shaped landscapes, livelihoods, wealth, memory, and identity. In Negros, sugar is not merely an agricultural product. It is part of the island’s cultural language. It is in the fields that stretch across towns, in the histories of haciendas, in the old image of the Negrense “sweet life,” and in the continuing search for what sugarcane can still become.
Through Patdan, Jun is taking that heritage and giving it a new form. What was once grown mainly for sugar is now being crafted into wine. The result is something both rooted and contemporary: Sugarlandia, replanted in a bottle.
At 25, Jun is part of a younger generation of Negrense entrepreneurs looking at inherited resources with fresh eyes. A graduate of Entrepreneurship from the University of St. La Salle, he is the owner, producer, and only employee behind Patdan. The wine is not backed by a large factory or a long production line. Much of the work is done by Jun himself, in small batches, with a process he continues to refine.
It was not always the path he imagined for himself.
Jun did not initially plan to take over the family’s sugarcane farm. He did not picture himself spending his life in Bacolod, much less managing a hacienda whose operations, to him, already seemed set in place. By nature, he was drawn to complexity, to building something new, to using his background in entrepreneurship in a way that felt personal. The farm, at first, felt too familiar.
But his father wanted Jun and his siblings to continue the family business. Before he passed away in 2024, he made sure to set them up for a good life, leaving them with resources they could use to build their own paths. Among these was a building Jun once did not quite know what to do with. Eventually, it would become the very place where Patdan Wine would be made, with production taking shape in its basement.
Two weeks before his father’s passing, Jun told him about his plan to create a sugarcane wine. His father never got to taste the finished product. By the time Jun perfected the recipe, after a year and six months of trial and error with a consultant, his father was no longer around.
It is a painful detail, but Jun’s story does not rest on grief. Instead, Patdan became a way forward. His father’s passing gave him a deeper reason to return to the hacienda, not by simply continuing the farm as it was, but by finding his own place within it. Patdan is not a break from the family business. It is Jun’s way of returning to it.
The idea for Patdan began with basi, the traditional sugarcane wine associated with Ilocos. Jun encountered the drink and began to wonder: if other places could make wine from sugarcane, why not Negros? In a province known for its abundance of sugarcane, why was there no prominent local sugarcane wine carrying the identity of the Sugar Bowl?
That question stayed with him. His family had a sugarcane farm. His province had the raw material. His training gave him the tools to turn an idea into a brand. What he needed was to build the product properly.
Patdan is made from pure sugarcane juice. Jun emphasizes this because the process sets the wine apart from other sugarcane-based alcoholic products that may use molasses or added water. For him, the quality begins with the cane itself. The sugarcane must be sweet enough to pass his standards. When the cane from their farm does not meet the level he needs, he will have to source it from other producers. The sugar content is tested using a hydrometer, ensuring that each batch begins with the right foundation.
This is also why Patdan is produced only in small batches. A batch of around 500 bottles takes about three to four months to finish, and production follows the rhythm of the harvest season. When there is no sugarcane harvest, there is no Patdan production. In that sense, the wine remains tied to the land. It is not forced into constant output. It follows the patience of the crop.
Jun’s process is similar to winemaking from grapes, but instead of grapes, he works with pure sugarcane juice. He has experimented with wooden barrels, but eventually found that glass produced the clarity and profile he wanted. In glass, he says, the wine becomes very clear. It is a method shaped by testing, adjustment, and restraint.
The result is a sugarcane wine that Jun sees as versatile. It can be enjoyed as a dessert wine, paired with meat or fish, or used in mixed drinks. It can stand on its own or be combined with other spirits. More than novelty, Jun wants Patdan to be recognized for quality. At Php649 per bottle, he hopes it remains accessible while still carrying the value of a carefully made local product.
That balance matters to him. Patdan is not something he wants to rush into mass production. He is still processing the necessary requirements and documents to further legitimize the product, while also continuing to improve his facility and process. His sales, he says, have not been bad for a startup, but profit is not the only point.
For Jun, Patdan is a passion before business. Money, he believes, can be found. Passion is what becomes legacy.
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This belief aligns with the slow, deliberate nature of the product. Patdan is connected with the values of the Slow Food movement, where food and drink are understood not only by taste, but by origin, craft, and community. When Jun joined Terra Madre in November 2025, it became an important opportunity to introduce Patdan to a wider audience. There, he met a mixologist who let him try sugarcane wine from Ilocos. When the mixologist tasted Patdan, Jun recalls that he was surprised by its quality, even more so when he learned that it was priced at only Php649.
Moments like that have encouraged Jun to think bigger, though still carefully. He hopes to eventually expand his line beyond wine into rum, gin, and other alcoholic products. He also dreams of developing his own distillation process and, perhaps one day, establishing a crafted distillery in Negros. In a province so deeply associated with sugarcane, Jun hopes Patdan may be part of a new chapter in how Negrenses see and use their most iconic crop.
In this way, Patdan brings sugar back to a kind of “gold” value. Not as a commodity alone, and not merely as a symbol of an old social order, but as a craft. It transforms sugarcane into something that can be poured, shared, paired, and reimagined. It allows today’s generation to participate in the sweetness that shaped their ancestors, but in a way that supports local creativity and entrepreneurship.
This is where Patdan becomes more than a bottle of wine. It becomes a metaphor for Negros itself.
The sugar industry has long defined the province, but heritage cannot survive by remaining unchanged. It has to be replanted. It has to find new soil, new hands, and new forms. For Jun, that replanting begins with the crop his father knew so well and the word he first heard as a child on the farm.
Patdan is the part of the sugarcane that is cut and planted again. It carries within it the promise of another harvest.
Jun’s father may not have tasted the wine that now bears the name, but his presence remains in its roots: in the hacienda he hoped his children would continue, in the building he left behind, in the word he once explained to his son, and in the quiet insistence that legacy is not simply inherited. It is made.
With every bottle, Patdan offers a taste of Sugarlandia’s past, but also a glimpse of its future. It is sweet, but not simply because it comes from sugarcane. It is sweet because it carries memory. It carries patience. It carries the courage of a young Negrense who looked at what was handed down to him and chose not only to preserve it, but to let it grow again.
Article by: Liway Espina
Photos by: Bem Cortez
