Liu Bang and Xiang Yu's "The Hongmen Banquet", the seven sages of the bamboo forest poured wine into their hearts, Wang Xizhi wrote "Preface to the Lanting Pavilion" and Li Bai wrote "Don't Stop Drinking" ... How can there be no yellow wine on the table of China people for generations?
1. Where there is yellow wine, there are jokes.
In Jin Ping Mei, Master Simon's wives and concubines get together to eat crabs, and Pan Jinlian wants to drink Jinhua wine. Shaoxing wine and Huiquan wine are indispensable for the crab feast in a Dream of Red Mansions.
The flag-bearer, Lao She, Wang Tongzhao, Wu Boxiao, Tai Jingnong and others gathered in the pub "Mao Rong Feng" in Qingdao, tore off sea crabs and drank the spicy and bitter old wine-Jimo old wine. Lao She also sings a few pieces of Peking Opera from time to time.
Jinhua wine, Shaoxing wine, Huiquan wine and Jimo old wine all belong to yellow rice wine, although their names and places of origin are different.
The tenderness of yellow rice wine always reminds people of the scenery in Jiangnan. A dish of fennel beans, a dish of salted bamboo shoots, and ten Shaoxing daughters' red with oily tofu, time changed color in the aftertaste. In "Flower World on the Sea", Wang Liansheng, played by Tony Leung Chiu Wai, and a bunch of other people are listening to songs with their fists clenched in Shanghai's third apartment, shouting "Eat the old wine, eat the old wine", and the Wu language mumbles something charming.
Wang Anyi also said that the soil and water habits of yellow rice wine are more acute and prominent than those of white rice wine, which is related to geography, history, living customs and even religious beliefs.
"Jiangnan people especially like to drink yellow rice wine, and they are not drunk because it fits well with the wine in this area ... Jiangnan, yellow rice wine is suitable for women and children, nourishing."
Therefore, many people classify yellow rice wine as southern wine, which is called "southern yellow and northern white". But in fact, yellow rice wine is one of the three ancient wines in the world, just like wine and beer. Since the advent of wine, until the Republic of China, no matter in the north or the south, an altar of good yellow wine should be opened for the upper class to entertain.
What exactly is yellow rice wine? According to the national standard, yellow rice wine is a bilateral fermentation with rice, millet, corn, millet and wheat as the main raw materials, and medicated wine and wheat koji as saccharifying and fermenting agents. The brewing process includes cooking, koji adding, saccharification, fermentation, squeezing, filtering, wine frying, storage and blending.
2. Yellow rice wine, proudly debut
Yellow rice wine has a long history, which can be traced back to thousands of years ago.
Legend has it that wine-making was invented by a "noble" Ms. Di at the end of the Neolithic Age. Archaeological discoveries are even more amazing. During the cultural period of magnetic mountain culture and Hemudu 7000 years ago, people used grains to make wine. During the Yin and Shang Dynasties, people also used grains to make koji medicine.
There is a cloud in the Book of Songs: "Saibiyuzan, Liu Huang is in the middle." Liu Huang, a kind of wine brewed with black millet and tulip grass, may be the source of yellow rice wine. However, this wine is estimated to have two different tastes from today's yellow rice wine.
Since the Han Dynasty, the brewing of yellow rice wine has developed rapidly. In Song Dynasty, yellow rice wine family businesses, large and small, appeared, which became an important taxpayer of Zhao family. Some people have recorded the names of 100 kinds of yellow rice wine, such as Xiangquan, Tian Chun, Yaochi, Hangzhuyeqing, Bixiang, Suzhou Mulan Pavilion, Baiyun Spring, Gui Xiang of Zhouguo, Yinye, Eighteen Immortals of Guangzhou, Zhao Xia of Dengzhou and so on. Very charming.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Shaoxing yellow rice wine suddenly emerged as the "Alibaba" of the yellow rice wine industry, and there were large and small wine workshops along Jianhu Lake. Thanks to the brewing materials, the taste of yellow rice wine made from glutinous rice in the south is better than that made from millet in the north.
As early as the Han Dynasty, the royal family divided wine into three classes according to different raw materials, among which rice was the best and millet and millet were the worst. Gradually, the brewing center of yellow rice wine moved to the south, and northerners realized the shortage of raw materials for brewing yellow rice wine, so they specialized in producing sorghum shochu.
At present, the producing areas of yellow rice wine are concentrated in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, including Shaoxing yellow rice wine from Zhejiang school, Alao wine from Ningbo school, Suzhou Taoyuan yellow rice wine from Su school, Huiquan yellow rice wine from Wuxi school, Shanghai-style mixed wine, Shikumen and so on.
In addition, there are Fujian old wine and Longyan heavy wine, which represent the red yeast rice yellow wine in the south. Jiangsu sent Danyang to seal the wine, and Jiujiang sealed the wine, which tasted sweet; The most distinctive is the northern rice wine-Shandong Jimo old wine, which has a unique flavor in the southern rice wine.
Jimo now belongs to Qingdao, next to Laoshan Mountain. Jimo old wine brewed by Jimo people with millet, Chen Fu Maiqu and Laoshan mineral water has almost become the "only" representative of Beipai yellow rice wine. In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, there were more than 500 wine workshops in jimo city. Until the 1970s, grandmothers still had the habit of "warming old wine every day", which was said to be extremely nourishing.
The uniqueness of Jimo old wine lies in that, in addition to using millet as raw material, there is also a process of "simmering"-after the rice is cooked thoroughly, it is stirred with a spatula while heating, and it is burnt without paste, and it has been "simmered" until the rice is brownish red. Therefore, Jimo old wine can be hung on the wall even if it has no caramel color, and it has a deep color and a natural burnt flavor. It seems bitter after entering and disappears instantly, so it is also called "bitter dew" or "bitter old wine". After the famous writer Tai Jingnong came to Taiwan Province Province, what he missed most was this dark old bitter wine.
3. Shaoxing people can't drink Shaoxing rice wine? !
Shaoxing yellow rice wine is the best in yellow rice wine.
Yuan Mei, a gourmet in the Qing Dynasty, compared Shaoxing wine to a "celebrity": "Shaoxing wine is like an honest official who doesn't leave his post, but its taste is really like the elders of celebrities. If you live in the world for a long time, the more refined it is, the thicker its quality will be." On Jia Baoyu's birthday, he gave a banquet in Justin, and specially asked Pinger to bring an altar of Shaoxing wine.
The most famous Shaoxing rice wine is Daughter Red. Legend has it that when the daughter of the local people was born, the wine was stored in the carved jars and buried underground, and the banquet was not held until the daughter got married eighteen years later. Although Zhou Zuoren recalled that this custom had long since disappeared. However, local people do prepare home-brewed beer.
Interestingly, according to Jin Fei's nephew Zhen Fei and the aristocratic family Tang in the late Qing Dynasty:
"In Shaoxing, you may not be able to drink good Shaoxing wine. This is the so-called source is not as good as gathering. "
According to the analysis of Tang Dynasty, when Shaoxing wine is produced in the place of origin, it is divided into Jingzhuang and Guangzhuang, Jingzhuang is sold in Beiping and Guangzhuang is sold in Guangzhou. Both of them are rich, but they are far from each other. Therefore, the selected Shaoxing wine is the best wine made by Seiko, which is not easy to deteriorate. He also recalled that in the early years, as long as the official had a soft spot for the things in the cup, there would be several jars of good wine at home, and only when a bosom friend came at home would he be willing to open the jar and drink it off.
4. Wine Jianghu | Heroes dominate the world
Shaoxing wine is currently divided into four types.
One is Justin, namely Zhuangyuanhong, which is a bulk product of Shaoxing yellow wine, named after the cinnabar coating on the outer wall of the jar. This wine is completely fermented, with little sugar, transparent orange color, refreshing and slightly bitter. It belongs to dry yellow rice wine and is most popular with alcoholics.
One is yellow rice wine, which is a kind of semi-dry yellow rice wine that reduces water and increases rice. It has high mash concentration, amber color and is particularly mellow, commonly known as "thick meat".
In contrast, there are fewer new varieties, Sanhaoniang and Sixiangxue.
Good brewing was initiated by Shen Yonghe Brewery in Qing Dynasty and was inspired by brewing soy sauce. This wine is brewed with Justin instead of water. It is dark yellow, sweet and low in alcohol content. This is a semi-sweet yellow rice wine.
Xiang Xue was created in 19 12. It is brewed with distiller's grains instead of water, and only uses white wine, so it is as white as snow, fragrant and sweet.
Bamboo leaf green, also a kind of Shaoxing wine and yellow rice wine, is blended with Justin or yellow rice wine as the base wine and the wine extracted from the light green bamboo leaves that were picked in the same year by high-bad cooking as the pigment. It is light yellow-green, fresh and mellow, and has a unique flavor. Don Sun Lu praised the bamboo leaves in Biwuxuan, West Lake, Hangzhou for their "mellow taste", just like Li Bai's "dripping pot" feeling in Brewmaster.
In addition, Shaoxing people also brew other unique yellow rice wine, such as crucian carp wine, osmanthus wine and Fuju wine. Put the materials into a jar, pour them into Justin, seal them with mud and dissolve them in wine, so that they can escape various flavors.
5. Brew good wine in the depths of Jianhu water and poetry.
Water is the "blood" of wine and the most important factor in wine making. A good wine producing area must have good water. The reason why Shaoxing rice wine is good depends entirely on the local Jianhu water.
Jianhu Lake is actually an artificial lake built in the Eastern Han Dynasty, covering an area of 206 square kilometers and distributed in Yinshan and Huiji counties. South of Jianhu Lake is Huiji Mountain, which flows into 36 streams such as Ruoye and Lanting, and the water is as clear as a mirror. During the Six Dynasties, it was deeply loved by celebrities such as Xie An, Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi. However, since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Shaoxing Jianhu Lake has been gradually divided by fishing villages, and the vast lake has disappeared. Until today, it is still shrinking. Fortunately, the water quality is still relatively reliable.
Jianhu water is most suitable for wine making. During the period from 198 1 to 1983, Shaoxing Institute of Environmental Science and other nine units conducted an in-depth investigation on Jianhu water, and found that the geological heavy metal content in Jianhu water source area was low, and proper minerals made the water body moderate in hardness and clean. The muddy coal seam in the lake area has strong adsorption ability to pollutants, so Jianhu water has strong self-purification ability, and it is always new and always clear.
Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi and other places have set up branches of Shaoxing Winery, using high-quality glutinous rice and following the traditional ancient method, but the taste is always poor.
Traditional manual Shaoxing yellow wine brewing pays the most attention to seasonal phenology, and it is gradual according to natural circulation, which is not bad at all.
The best season of Jianhu water is from June 5438+00 to May of the following year. Therefore, the traditional brewing of Shaoxing yellow rice wine pays attention to "one winter and one brewing"-starting from the winter, it begins to soak rice for fermentation, and then it is stored in the open air in front of the pottery altar, so that the yellow rice wine can slowly ferment in the long winter of three months and can not be squeezed out until the next spring.
In summer, winemakers begin to prepare for the winter brewing in the next brewing season-cultivating wine medicine in July of the lunar calendar, making wheat koji in August, brewing wine in September, and then a cycle of winter brewing and spring pressing.
In dog days, local Polygonum hydropiper was collected, dried, mixed with brown rice flour, and made into medicinal liquor by hand; When osmanthus is in full bloom in autumn, wheat is used to make wheat koji, also called osmanthus koji; Then make wine yeast in winter. Therefore, this handmade Shaoxing wine brewed in winter is really the soul of nature.
Yellow rice wine should be boiled and drunk. It tastes best at 38 degrees Celsius, and the volatile balsam in the smell slowly escapes, which smells very fragrant. On the day of my period, I can add some ginger and brown sugar, which is also an ancient method; But don't add plum, that's the way people drink in Taiwan Province province. Yellow rice wine with hairy crabs is the most suitable, but more exquisite gourmets will match Justin with aged rice.
You can also inherit Jin Shengtan's legacy and drink it with fried peanuts and spiced tofu. Or like Pan Jinlian, use fresh water chestnut, water chestnut and fresh lotus root. In addition, fermented grains, drunken crabs, fried snails and even pine nuts and almonds are all good things to accompany wine.
However, what I want to try most is a bad dried white rice herring, Lu Xun's favorite appetizer.
References: China Yellow Rice Wine by Mao Zhaoxian, Shaoxing Wine Culture by the Literature and History Information Committee of Shaoxing Municipal People's Political Consultative Conference, Shaoxing Yellow Rice Wine Brewing Skills by Yang, Eating in China by Tang, Alcoholic by Wang Anyi, Eating in the Same Garden by Yuan Mei (Qing Dynasty), The Book of Songs by Ge Peiling and The Complete Works of Zhou Zuoren by Zhong Shuhe.