A brick of mouldy grain carrying wild yeasts and fungi, used instead of brewer's yeast
Qū (麴), the starter culture — the single technical feature that separates Chinese distilling from Western.
General knowledge · Food & drink
Baijiu
Distilling in China from at least the Yuan dynasty; Moutai brand from the 18th–19th century
Food and drink — the Chinese grain spirit and its most famous brand
The clear Chinese grain spirit, usually distilled from sorghum, which by volume is the most consumed spirit in the world. It is fermented not with brewer's yeast but with qū, a brick of mouldy grain carrying wild yeasts and fungi, and the mash ferments as a solid in earthen pits rather than as a liquid. Styles are classified by aroma: light, strong, rice and above all sauce aroma, whose exemplar is Moutai, made at the town of Maotai on the Chishui River in Guizhou. Moutai is China's national banquet liquor, poured for Nixon by Zhou Enlai in 1972, and its maker has at times been the most valuable drinks company on earth.
How to spot them
- ▸Distilled from sorghum, fermented with qū and not with brewer's yeast
- ▸Classified by 'aroma' — sauce, strong, light and rice
- ▸The most-drunk spirit in the world by volume, almost all of it inside one country
- ▸Bottled at around 53 per cent alcohol, in a white flask with a red ribbon
- ▸A gold medal at San Francisco in 1915, and a state banquet in 1972
Key facts
The mash ferments as a solid in earthen pits, some of them in continuous use for centuries
Solid-state fermentation; the microflora of the pit walls is treated as part of the recipe.
A town on the Chishui River in Guizhou province whose name became the liquor's
Maotai, in Renhuai. The company behind it is Kweichow Moutai, listed in Shanghai.
A gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, and a legend about a deliberately dropped jar (1915)
The story goes that the smashed jar's aroma drew the judges. The award made the brand's domestic reputation.
Zhou Enlai raised a glass of it to Richard Nixon in Beijing in February 1972 (1972)
Kissinger's line was that if they drank enough of it they could solve anything. It is China's designated state banquet liquor.
Four flavour categories — sauce, strong, light and rice — decide how a bottle is judged
Jiangxiang, nongxiang, qingxiang and mixiang. Wuliangye and Luzhou Laojiao are strong aroma; Fenjiu is light.
Xi Jinping's austerity drive of 2012 sent the share price of one Guizhou distiller tumbling (2012)
The anti-extravagance campaign hit banquet sales; the company later recovered to become China's most valuable listed firm.
Key ideas
- The 'aroma' classes are a formal taxonomy, established at national appraisal conferences from the 1950s, not a marketing device. A bottle's class tells you the fermentation vessel and the starter as much as the smell.
Quick-fire facts
- •The name means simply 'white spirit' or 'clear liquor'; it is usually distilled from sorghum, sometimes with rice, wheat, maize or barley
- •Fermentation uses qū, a solid starter of mould-inoculated grain, and takes place in the solid state rather than in a liquid wash
- •By volume it is the world's best-selling spirit category, though the overwhelming majority is drunk within China
- •The four principal aroma classes are jiangxiang (sauce), nongxiang (strong), qingxiang (light) and mixiang (rice)
- •Moutai is the exemplar of the sauce-aroma style and is made at Maotai town in Renhuai, Guizhou, on the Chishui River
- •Moutai is bottled at about 53 per cent alcohol by volume and its production cycle runs about a year, with multiple rounds of fermentation and distillation
- •It won a gold medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco
- •Zhou Enlai served it to Richard Nixon during the 1972 visit to China, and it is used at Chinese state banquets
- •Kweichow Moutai is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and has at times been the world's most valuable spirits company by market capitalisation
- •Other famous brands include Wuliangye and Luzhou Laojiao (strong aroma) and Fenjiu from Shanxi (light aroma)
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Sources
- Derek Sandhaus — Baijiu: The Essential Guide to Chinese Spirits
- Sixth Tone — Brewing Trouble — a report on Moutai and Maotai town