Shaoxing Wine Stories

© 2015 Peg Christoff, Yuanzi Liu, Yuan Liu, and Annetta Fotopoulos Shaoxing Wine Stories The following three stories are a series of first-hand accounts about winemaking techniques, wine-related traditions, and wine consumption in1930s Shaoxing (now a city in Zhejiang Province in eastern China). Wine has been cultivated in the Shaoxing region since ancient times, and has long been a source of both national fame and local pride. The narrator is a centenarian named Liu Yuanzi, who currently is living in the United States, but grew up in China. Yuanzi came from a family of moderately wealthy and influential literati originally from Shaoxing. Her father, Liu Dabai, was a distinguished poet, literary critic and historian, as well as one of the pioneers of the early 20th century New Culture Movement, which drastically changed the cultural and political landscape of China by rejecting traditional Confucian values and promoting Western concepts such as science and democracy. Liu also served as the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Education in 1928, and played an important role in reforming the Chinese education system by promoting vernacular literature. The rich cultural environment in Shaoxing nurtured many forward-thinking intellectuals, including the now well-known feminist revolutionary Qiu Jin, and Liu Dabai’s contemporary, the author and reformer Lu Xun. In fact, many of the specific cultural traditions Lu Xun describes in his short stories are characteristic of the Shaoxing region in which he grew up, including the rituals for celebrating the New Year in New Year’s Sacrifice and the bar culture in Kong Yiji. Here, Yuanzi gives us a more personal and nuanced look at Shaoxing wine culture as she nostalgically reflects on how Shaoxing locals made, drank and thought about wine in the 1930s: 1 © 2015 Peg Christoff, Yuanzi Liu, Yuan Liu, and Annetta Fotopoulos Shaoxing Wine Story One: Making Shaoxing Wine Legend –The Origin of Shaoxing Wine Story Two: Daughter’s Wine Legend –The Origin of Daughter’s Wine Story Three: Drinking Shaoxing Wine Story One: Making Shaoxing Wine My hometown of Shaoxing is the most famous wine-producing region in all of China. If you don’t believe me, just ask Chinese from other parts of China what they know about Shaoxing. I bet that nine out of ten of them would mention Shaoxing wine. Many years after I had retired and moved to the United States, I went from Hangzhou back to Shaoxing with my daughter and American son-in-law. As soon as we crossed into the Shaoxing district, the first sight that met my eyes was wine jars piled up like mountains along both sides of the road. Seeing those familiar jars, all the vivid memories of Shaoxing wine from when I was young floated up before my eyes. Shaoxing wine is made from fermented rice. Good Shaoxing wine is the color of amber, and that’s why it’s also referred to as “yellow wine.”1 Unlike the strong distilled sorghum liquor of northern China, Shaoxing wine has a low alcohol content, similar to grape wine, and the quality of the water used determines the quality of the wine. 1 Huangjiu 黃酒. 2 © 2015 Peg Christoff, Yuanzi Liu, Yuan Liu, and Annetta Fotopoulos Shaoxing’s climate is characteristically warm and moist. The region, crisscrossed by many rivers, streams, and lakes, flourishes in rice production. Moreover, Shaoxing was favored by nature in that it was blessed with the superb water of Jian Lake, which is located on the southwest side of the old city.2 The water in Jian Lake is collected from the springs of the Huiji Mountains.3 The spring water trickles down from the mountains and is filtered by sand and stones. Any other impurities are absorbed by the peat layer at the bottom of the lake. I remember when I was young the water in Jian Lake was so clear that it looked like a mirror.4 Shaoxing wine is fermented from high-quality rice and fresh water, and has a naturally fragrant scent. An ancient Chinese poem attests to this: “The water fetched from Jian Lake/ just outside our front door/ makes Shaoxing wine so fragrant that people can smell it ten thousand miles away.”5 No wonder the rice wine made in Shaoxing is renowned for its exceptional taste and fragrance. Shaoxing wine isn’t only famous in China. It’s reputed throughout the world. I remember my father once told me that in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, which was held in San Francisco in 1915 to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, Shaoxing wine won a gold medal. Probably because Shaoxing wine has such a long history, we Shaoxingers like to call our wine “old wine.”6 When I was little, I heard an interesting legend about the origin of Shaoxing wine from my elders: 2 Jian Hu 鑒湖. 3 Huiji Shan 會稽山. 4 Jian 鑒 literally means “mirror” in Classical Chinese. 5 Jiqu menqian Jianhu shui/ niang de Shaojiu wanli xiang 汲取門前鑒湖水/ 釀得紹酒萬里香. 6 Laojiu 老酒. 3 © 2015 Peg Christoff, Yuanzi Liu, Yuan Liu, and Annetta Fotopoulos Legend –The Origin of Shaoxing Wine In the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC - 476 BC), there were two kingdoms south of the Yangzi River, Wu and Yue.7 The two kingdoms continually fought and, in 494 BC, Wu conquered Yue and took its king, Goujian, hostage.8 While imprisoned, King Goujian desperately wanted to get revenge. However, he hid his true feelings and acted as if he was completely defeated. After a while, the King of Wu, Fuchai, allowed Goujian to return home.9 A few years later, as a result of a severe drought, Yue had a very poor rice harvest, which caused widespread famine. King Goujian called his ministers together to seek their advice. One particularly clever minister, Wen Zhong, devised a strategy to help Yue recover from the famine and enable King Goujian to reclaim the land that Wu had taken. Minister Wen Zhong proposed asking King Fuchai to lend Yue rice to stave off the famine, with the condition that King Goujian would repay him in kind once the crisis had passed. Just as Minister Wen Zhong had predicted, King Fuchai willingly lent the rice, essentially revealing that he no longer considered Yue a threat. Following Minister Wen Zhong’s advice, before returning the rice to King Fuchai, King Guojian instructed the farmers to dig hundreds of pits along the shores of the Jian Lake, place woks in the pits, and steam the rice. King Goujian then returned the steamed rice to King Fuchai. Because this rice looked exactly like excellent quality raw rice seeds, the Wu farmers planted it and eagerly awaited the results. But the next year, the farmers were unable to harvest a single grain of rice, which caused major unrest among the people. King Goujian was then able to take back his land from King Fuchai. To celebrate this victory, farmers in Yue used the woks and the water from Jian Lake to boil rice and make wine. 7 The Spring and Autumn (春秋) period was the name given to the first part of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, in which the nominally Zhou domain was divided into numerous decentralized states in competition with one another. Wu 吳 was located primarily in what is present-day Suzhou in Jiangsu Province. Yue 越 was located primarily in what is present-day Shaoxing in Zhejiang Province. 8 The legend of King Goujian (勾踐) is famous not only in the Shaoxing region, but throughout all of China. 9 Fuchai 夫差. 4 © 2015 Peg Christoff, Yuanzi Liu, Yuan Liu, and Annetta Fotopoulos So, I am told, this was how the custom of making Shaoxing wine using water from Jian Lake began. In the old days in Shaoxing, wealthy families would make their own wine at least every two or three years if not every year. My father’s cousin, who we called “Uncle Ren,” belonged to such a family. In the 1930s, I attended Chunhui middle school in Shangyu County near Shaoxing.10 Chunhui was a boarding school, so I mostly lived there. Since my parents had separated and my father subsequently had passed away, during breaks, I often stayed at Uncle Ren’s place in the Shaoxing region. Uncle Ren had a plot of land in front of the house that was designated specifically for growing rice to make wine. Each year in the spring, a premium variety of sweet rice would be chosen and planted in this field. After the harvest, Uncle Ren would invite a master winemaker to come to his home to make the wine for the family. The winemaker’s skills were passed down from generation to generation, as was his set of special winemaking tools. The winemaker had to come to Uncle Ren’s several times. As a curious teenager, I used to observe him with great interest. He first came in early winter to select a small amount of the best rice to wash, rinse, soak, drain, and steam. After the rice was cooled with cold water from the Jian Lake, he would add a yeast package based on a secret recipe that had been handed down for generations, to begin the first fermentation process. Then, the rice would be placed in a crock, and covered with heavy weights. The fermentation usually took a couple of weeks. After this first fermentation, the rice and liquid mixture, called jiuniang, would then be used as a starter for making the wine.11 The second time the winemaker came he would fetch the jiuniang.

Load more