The Panamanian Connection, Pt. 2: Trouble in Luzhou

Longtime readers of 300 Shots will be familiar with my interest in the oft-repeated legend of baijiu’s triumphant showing at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. According to the story, several Chinese alcohol companies presented at the event – a World’s Fair – and walked away with official commendations. The subject is referenced ad nauseam by baijiu manufacturers (and Changyu winery) and described at great length in this post. Despite my earlier suggestion that baijiu producers stop bragging about dubious awards won a century ago, they just aren’t listening.[1]

Last time around, I mentioned Luzhou Laojiao’s nefarious attempt to pass off a bronze medal as a “Best in Show” award. The company was formed in 1952, as their bottles proudly proclaim, placing any claim to a 1915 medal on shaky ground, but a new special edition bottle is making matters worse.

I present Exhibit A, Luzhou Laojiao’s new Tequ 特曲 bottle:

You will note that the bottom of the box prominently features their official certificate of award from the Panama-Pacific Exposition, albeit too small to read clearly. Luckily, I snapped a full-sized picture of the document[2] when I was in Luzhou last summer. So I now present, for your consideration, Exhibit B:

Now the first thing that jumps out at you is that “Gold Medal.” It’s off center, the wrong color and printed in a font that looks more 1960s Sci-Fi than 1915 World’s Fair. But then look further down and note that the award was bestowed upon: ORCHARD CITY CANNING COMPANY of Campbell, California for “Assorted Canned Fruits.” When I reached out to the OC Canning Co. for comment,[3] I found this lovely Campbell City historical page, which states, in no uncertain terms, that the award was a BRONZE medal.

Wow. Just wow. Luzhou Laojiao took an award it didn’t win, Photoshopped it to look more impressive than it actually was, but forgot to Photoshop out the original company’s name before sticking it on a baijiu package sold all over the country. Good work.

If you must lie, at least do a better of job of it. There’s no Bronze Gold Medal for half-assing it.

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[1] Read: Don’t pay attention to my blog.

[2] I’ve checked it against the new baijiu box; it’s the same certificate.

[3] Read: Googled.

Year of the Snake

Happy New Year, readers. It’s the Year of the Snake and what better way to celebrate than a little post on Snake Wine.

In south China – and much of Southeast Asia – snakes are all the rage. Snake wine is typically a steeped alcohol, or paojiu, but it’s also a yaojiu or yingyangjiu (health alcohol) . . . or whatever. It all comes to the same thing: a big jar of alcohol filled with scary looking snakes.

It’s from Chinese snake wine and assorted slithery ointments that we get the American expression snake oil salesman, meaning seller of medical quackery. But joke’s on America. Chinese water snakes are loaded with omega-3 fatty acids, so they’re healthful after all. Who’d have thunk it.

So how does one get their hands on snake wine? Well, you can order it online (this site says they’ll give me free snake wine if I mention them in my blog, so consider it mentioned) or buy it from your friendly neighborhood snake vintner,[1] but most people elect to make it themselves. There are two methods for this.

Method 1: Steeping

1. First you’re going to need to find a shitload of baijiu (rice baijiu is advised, but any baijiu will do).
2. Take a snake, preferably a dead snake, and drop it in the baijiu.
3. Let sit for several hours, days, months or years. Steep to taste.
4. If you suffer from joint pain, headaches, soreness, anxiety, shortness of attention, apathy, cultural insensitivity or apoplexy drink the snake wine.
5. If that doesn’t work, drink more snake wine. Or just kind of like break off a piece of snake and chew on it for a while.
6. If you are still experiencing consciousness, put down the snake wine.

Method 2: Hardcore Leonardo-Di-muthafuckin-Caprio-in-The-Beach Method

1. Surround yourself with screaming, shirtless Southeast Asian stereotypes. The closer you get to the end of Deer Hunter, the better.
2. Cut the gall bladder out of a live snake. Step 1 should make this easier.
3. Squeeze bile into a glass half-filled with baijiu.
4. Drink in one gulp, slam glass on the table with a savage, sub-human scream.

Pro-tip: Repeating steps 1-4 several times may make The Beach watchable.

That’s all for now. Back to more heavy drinking with heavy artillery (read: shitty Chinese fireworks). Just hope that I don’t do a follow up post for the Year of the Horse.

Disclaimer: 300 Shots has never attempted to make snake wine, and does not recommend you actually try making your own snake wine. Liability for any death related to snake bite, alcohol poisoning, or any complications related to the manufacture or consumption of snake wine will be adjudicated in accordance with Murphy’s Law. We accept no responsibility. As the Indian in Natural Born Killers says: “Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake.”

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[1] Though snake wine salespeople are easier to find in China, I can’t help but suspect that some Brooklyn hipster will soon have the New York artisanal snake wine market cornered.

All the baijiu in China

West Lake, Hangzhou. Image by Kwong Yee Cheng.

How much baijiu does China consume? According to many industry professionals, China drinks enough baijiu each year to fill Hangzhou’s West Lake. I’ve been told this on more than one occasion, and seen it repeated in the media (a version of the urban legend was recently mentioned here). But what bearing, if any, does this rather neat-sounding measure have in reality.

Figures on baijiu consumption are notoriously hard to come by and most of the statistics on consumption are little more than (possibly) well-informed guesswork. I have, however, come across a few statistics on how much baijiu China produces each year. Whether these figures – which come from both official and independent analysis – are reliable, I can’t say, but they at least provide a rough approximation of the available supply.[1]

Enough with the preamble and now for the figures. Every year Chinese distillers are estimated to produce between 2.6 and 4.5 billion gallons (10 to 17 billion liters) of baijiu.[2] Even at the conservative low-end of that range, we’re talking about two gallons of baijiu per Chinese citizen – or about one gallon of pure alcohol. It’s a lot of fucking baijiu any way you pour it.

And how big is West Lake? Using Wikipedia and a jumble of half-remembered primary school math, I get 14.755 liters.[3] This clearly puts it within our annual baijiu output range.

So there you have it. Every year China probably drinks as much baijiu to fill West Lake once over, or I’ve just publicly demonstrated my weak grasp of basic mathematics. You decide.

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[1] I note that these figures are rough, because baijiu producers tend to be tight-lipped, evasive even, with production figures. Also much of the baijiu at the high-end is given away as gifts and may not be immediately consumed.

[2] This is admittedly a wide range. The actual figure is probably somewhere in between these two figures, though I would err on the side of the more liberal figure as there is plenty of baijiu that flies under the official radar.

[3] West Lake covers a surface area of 6.5 million meters and has an average depth of 2.27 meters. By multiplying these numbers I get a volume of 14.755 million meters cubed, which my computer’s unit converter claims equals 14.755 billion liters (this would be patently obvious if Americans were taught a basic understanding of the metric system).

Baijiu basics: strong aroma

The factories of Wuliangye—China’s largest baijiu producer—in Yibin, Sichuan.

Full disclosure: I live in Sichuan and think its strong-aroma baijiu is the best spirit China produces. But the Chinese seem to have my back on this one. Somewhere between about twenty-five and seventy percent[1] of the baijiu on the market is produced in Sichuan (a lot of the baijiu “produced” elsewhere is made with alcohol from Sichuan, about which more in a later post).  The secret to strong-aroma baijiu is in a complex, labor-intensive process that goes back roughly 500 years.

Preparation of ingredients: There are two distinct strong-aroma varieties: single-grain and multigrain. Single-grain strong-aromas use sorghum, whereas multi-grain can use just about anything. The most famous multi-grain, Wuliangye 五粮液, uses sorghum and also glutinous rice, long-grain rice, peas[2] and wheat. The same mixture is used by Jiannanchun 剑南春. As always, the ingredients are washed, steamed and cooled.

Preparation of qu: Sichuanese baijiu uses wheat-based bricks of “big qu.”

Saccharification and fermentation: The defining characteristic of strong-aroma baijiu is the use of fermentation pits. These are typically rectangular earthen pits a few meters deep, in which the ingredients and qu are buried for a period of several weeks (sometimes months) to ferment. Over time the bacteria and microorganisms, as well as some of the alcohol itself, seeps into the walls. This is supposed to enhance the flavor and overall quality of the pits. It takes a few years of use before a pit is considered good enough to produce high-quality spirits, and around thirty years before it is considered top shelf.

The oldest pits in continuous operation are in Luzhou – the Guojiao 国窖 (National Cellar) 1573 pits. Chengdu’s Shuijingfang 水井坊 also claims the oldest pits. The Quanxing company (Shuijingfang’s former parent company) uncovered Ming dynasty pits under one of its distilleries in an archeological excavation in the late nineties, and have since incorporated bacteria discovered at the site into the Shuijingfang pits.

Spent grains from distillation are often mixed with fresh grains and returned to the same pit (what’s known as a sour mash), to ensure continuity between batches. Some producers prefer to employ what is called “pit running,” by which grains rotate from one fermentation cycle to the next – the number of cycles also varies.

Distillation: When the mud casing is removed from the top of a pit, the mash is taken out and distilled a layer at a time. The mash enters the still in a solid state and is essentially steamed in order to collect the alcohol.

Aging: The baijiu is moved to earthenware vats and typically aged for at least a year, sometimes several years. It is then mixed with water to achieve the desired strength.

Making strong-aroma is a labor-intensive process that results in an excellent spirit with a complex taste profile and a thick, pungent aroma. If it is not the best baijiu category, it is certainly the most expensive at the high-end.[3] This is also where the great bulk of foreign investment in baijiu is seen, as most believe the spirit has the highest potential as an international luxury product.

Next up, in the final installment in our series on making baijiu, is strong-aroma’s southwestern cousin: sauce-aroma. 

Related posts:

-Recommended strong-aromas

-Making baijiu made simple

[1] I agree that this is a fairly large range, but reliable statistics on the baijiu business are hard to come by. I’d guess the real figure lies somewhere in between, but in any case Sichuan almost certainly produces more baijiu than any other province.

[2] Note: The careful observer will note that peas are not a grain. Five-grain Liquid (Wuliangye) rolls of the tongue more easily than four-grain and pea liquid.

[3] Sauce-aroma baijiu – with its notoriously expensive Kweichow Moutai – can also be quite pricey, but only really has one brand with an outrageous price. Strong-aroma has many (Wuliangye, Shuijingfang, Jiannanchun and Luzhou Laojiao, to name but a few).

Wisdom of the Ancients

New year, new baijiu.

Several months ago I began corresponding with David Zhou of Potomac Falls, Virginia about a new North American baijiu he was producing called Confucius Wisdom. Not wanting to compromise myself (but obviously curious), I told him that I would try his baijiu and mention it on this site, but I wouldn’t mince words if I didn’t enjoy it. David said he stood by his product, and sent me a bottle.[1] I am pleased to say that, having tried it, I also stand by it.

Confucius (Master Kong, Kongzi, the Sage) was the antithesis of today’s binge-drinking ganbei fiend. The typical Confucian view on drinking has been one of moderation and formality. It’s not that one shouldn’t drink, but that one should only drink when fulfilling a ceremonial or social obligation, and even then one should not drink too much.

So why name a baijiu after Confucius?

Though Confucius Wisdom is an American brand, sold exclusively in North America, it is actually produced in Qufu, the ancestral home of the Kong family. According to Zhou, the product is brewed by direct descendents of Confucius using a long-held family recipe.[2]

Confucius Wisdom is a strong-aroma baijiu, watered down to 39% alcohol by volume. It’s smooth and flavorful, but it lacks the fiery kickback that scares away so many foreign drinkers. What’s nice about this product – and what makes it a worthy entrant into the North American market – is that it’s strong enough that you can get a good feel for the baijiu flavor profile, but light enough to not overpower those flavors.

As I’ve noted, lower levels of alcohol may be the key to baijiu’s future international success. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it lets you off easy, or that it must be sipped in dull Confucian moderation. After a night of slamming Confucius sauce (and a particularly odious fifty-two percent Luzhou Laojiao Nine Year), I could hardly bureaucra-see straight.

This is a good starter baijiu for curious readers living in the East Coast of the United States. And at around US$30 for a 750ml bottle, it’s good value. Right now Confucius Wisdom is only available in the Washington, D.C. area – the home of American Bureaucracy – but I’m told that if the early response is good, Zhou will expand his operations and bring more production stateside. That’s the kind of job creator we need in Washington.

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[1] It’s not every day that someone sends me a bottle of booze. Even if it’s baijiu, it’s still a good start. Take note, distillers.

[2] For all I know, half of Qufu may be related (or claim to be related) to Confucius. Maybe more.