Ideal mix of the old and new

By Miguel Villanueva ( China Daily )

Updated: 2016-07-28

The most Chinese of liquors is gaining a place in foreign markets, Miguel Villanueva reports.

I was offered my first glass of baijiu, the national drink of China, more than a decade ago. To the amusement of my classmates at Beijing Language and Culture University, I drank the 53 percent proof spirit without hesitation because of my deep respect for Chinese culture.

To me, baijiu is imbued with both history and legend. It carries a strong cultural meaning that is rich in historic facts, such as its use by the Red Army to sterilize wounds during the civil war. It also has an aura of legend, like the scenes portrayed in poems written by Li Bai, the Wine Immortal.

Ten years after that first taste, I find myself drinking baijiu again - this time at Maotai - the small town that produces the best liquor China has to offer.

Kweichow Moutai stands out as the most renowned brand of baijiu. For centuries, it has been produced in Maotai, Guizhou province. The old-fashioned romanization of its Chinese name evokes origins rooted in a unique location, tradition and mastery in liquor making.

Connoisseurs often break down baijiu into four different aromas: rice, light, strong and soy sauce, the latter being extremely laborious to achieve due to its exclusive relation to the geography, climate and materials only found at Maotai.

Moutai's classic Feitian 53 degrees, which is aged for five years, is a fine example of the sauce aroma. It is sweet to the nose, with traces of ethanol and acetone, and sour to the palate. Beware, though, the initial sip can be fierce to the uninitiated. Notes of a soy sauce fragrance and a lingering aftertaste that stimulate the appetite are among its most distinctive features.

Equally important are the health benefits brought by moderate consumption. Moutai stimulates the digestive and circulatory systems. After a couple of shots, the spirit delivers a warm, comfortable feeling to the whole body. Furthermore, its purity is such that it is free from the disagreeable physical effects that often follow alcohol consumption.

In recent years, authorities such as experts from Guizhou University have researched the health benefits of Moutai. Moreover, the Moutai Group has incorporated a few variations into its original recipe.

The refined characteristics of the spirit are linked to its geographical origin. Moutai is distilled from sorghum and wheat in an area of rich soil with particular climate conditions that produce a unique variety of microorganisms needed for fermentation, while also taking advantage of the unpolluted waters of the Chishui River.

Even after the government tried to build another factory in the northern outskirts of Zunyi to increase production, using exactly the same raw materials, workers and engineering from the original factory, the new location failed to produce liquor of the same quality. Thus, Moutai has attained an exclusive designation of geographical origin similar to Scotch whisky and Cognac brandy.

Nevertheless, Moutai has evolved from a completely different background compared to its Western counterparts. Unlike them, Moutai is solid-fermented and solid-distilled. The traditional production process requires multiple instances of cooking, cooling, blending and the addition of qu, Moutai's own fermentation agent.

Years of careful work and constant tending, with as many as seven distillations and long periods of storage, result in distillates with unique characteristics. Professional tasters separate, store and blend the concoctions according to age, fragrance and grade. In the end, more than 100 different-aged spirits go into a single batch of Moutai.

Modern machinery barely features in the production of Moutai. The crafting of China's finest liquor requires a great deal of manual labor. Activities such as barefoot crushing of grains, shoveling of concoctions and storage of the spirit in ceramic bottles are all common practice defined by the "Moutai Standard".

Following increasing demand for its products, the Moutai Group has established a series of modern brands based on the original formula, but with diverse properties such as age, alcohol content and medicinal properties. These brands are oriented to the ever-growing number of consumers looking for top quality baijiu, but not necessarily attached to the traditional sauce fragrance that gained Moutai its great reputation.

The expansion towards modernity does not mean the end of an era. On the contrary, my visit to Maotai only reaffirmed my respect for the ancient craft of liquor making in China. It was a pleasure to witness the capacity of a culture to keep its own history and legends alive in such a formidable manner, preserving human craftsmanship and the value of its own land in such a tangible, distinguished manner, for the world to see, and taste.

The author is director of Lotus Consulting based in Beijing. Contact the writer at cromo@gmx.net.

(China Daily 07/28/2016 page12)