The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails Definition of baijiu

baijiu is a category of Chinese grain spirit notable for its use of solid-state fermentation. Baijiu (literally, “white spirits”) is most commonly distilled from sorghum but is also often made from rice, wheat, corn, and millet. See sorghum. The production techniques differ significantly by region and style, but all baijiu is fermented with qu, cakes of wheat or rice inoculated with naturally harvested cultures of airborne yeast and microorganisms, including the Aspergillus oryzae fungus. See Aspergillus oryzae; qu. Most baijiu is also distilled in a solid state using traditional Chinese pot stills, which pass steam directly through the fermented grains (rather than a wash, as used elsewhere for grain distilling) to create alcoholic vapor. See Chinese still. The distilled liquor is produced in batches, which are aged separately and blended together to create a finished product. It is traditionally served neat at room temperature, consumed alongside meals through a series of communal toasts.

Owing principally to the immense population of the nation that created it, baijiu is the world’s most popular liquor by volume, with annual outputs that exceed that of vodka and whisky—numbers 2 and 3, respectively—combined. Yet outside of Asia baijiu remains largely unknown and misunderstood. This is due in part to a categorical confusion: baijiu and Western spirits, broadly defined, are fundamentally different alcohols. In terms of production, ingredients, flavor, and aroma they bear little in common. Thus for one born in a land that enjoys gin and brandy, baijiu is usually an acquired taste, and vice versa.

North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh (left) and Zhou Enlai, prime minister of the People’s Republic of China, drinking baijiu in Hanoi, 1960.

Getty Images.

Origins

Prehistoric Chinese began producing alcoholic beverages about nine thousand years ago. When the nation was first unified in 221 bce, there already existed a complex and varied winemaking tradition within its borders. It was around this time that qu-fermented grain alcohol called huangjiu (“yellow wine”) became China’s preferred tipple. Qu allowed Chinese brewers to perform dual action on grains, converting starches to sugars and sugars to alcohol simultaneously, processes that have always been performed separately when making huangjiu’s Western counterpart: beer. China’s elaborate bureaucracy allowed for rapid dissemination of production techniques, and regional winemakers across China developed countless variations.

According to the earliest known reference to baijiu, written during the sixteenth century, the Chinese began distilling the spirit during the Mongolian Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), but there is archaeological evidence, including two bronze stills from the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 ce) that it is very considerably older than that, and other evidence to suggest it may have already begun to spread throughout the region during the Tang dynasty (618–907 ce). See distillation, history. There is even the faint possibility that Marco Polo, who traveled through Mongolian China, tasted proto-baijiu when he wrote of a rice alcohol that was “clear, bright, and pleasant to the taste, and being (made) very hot, has the quality of inebriating sooner than any other.”

Whatever liquor first warmed Chinese bellies, it likely bore only faint resemblance to today’s baijiu. The earliest

These developments facilitated solid-state fermentation and distillation, and by the beginning of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) China possessed a drink resembling modern baijiu. The ruling scholar-bureaucrat caste still favored the more delicate huangjiu and would continue to do so until the twentieth century, but baijiu found an eager reception among the nation’s peasantry. Farmers and laborers appreciated that spirits required less grain to produce more potent drinks. Baijiu spread to all corners of the empire and absorbed local ingredients and winemaking techniques along the way. Thus emerged a number of distinct spirits in China, divided mainly along regional lines.

Modern Baijiu

After centuries of gradual evolution, baijiu changed radically following the fall of the Manchu Qing dynasty in 1912. China’s fledgling republic saw a resurgence of nationalism, and reformers attempted to create modern industrial enterprises to compete with those of foreigners in China’s colonized ports. Earlier baijiu had come almost exclusively from small family-run workshops, but during this period private investors created some of the nation’s first modern distilleries, such as what would later become Xinghuacun Fenjiu Distillery in Shanxi Province.

Political instability, Japanese invasion, and later civil war temporarily disrupted efforts at full-scale industrialization, which began in earnest with the birth of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In the first decade of Chairman Mao’s tenure the state created most of today’s major distilleries—Luzhou Laojiao, Jiannanchun, Xifengjiu, and others—by consolidating private baijiu workshops into massive state-run distilleries across the country. Stainless steel replaced wood, cranes replaced wheelbarrows, but the fundamentals of production remained intact. Most work was still performed by hand, only on a grander scale.

Baijiu, which had always been a proletarian tipple, firmly established itself as the national drink. Distilleries with patriotic bona fides, like Kweichow Moutai and Redstar Erguotou, received official promotion and became household names. Production techniques were recorded, improved upon, and codified, and the government created the first classification systems. Yet during the lean years of Mao’s China, grain was scarce, and the government rationed baijiu consumption, forestalling the possibility of connoisseurship.

It was only with the advent of President Deng Xiaoping’s “Reform and Opening Policy,” which reintroduced market economics to China in the late 1970s and 1980s, that baijiu entered full maturity. The number of private distilleries exploded during this period; early 1990s estimates place the number as high as 36,000. For the first time average Chinese had access to baijius produced in distant provinces, spurring innovation that created entire new varieties of spirits.

The industry has since moved toward consolidation and expansion, particularly in the premium segment. Baijius that once retailed for no more than a single US dollar began selling for hundreds. This was due mainly to rising demand from businessmen and government officials, who made a point of having top-shelf baijiu on hand for any important meeting. Starting in 2013, Beijing enacted measures to limit extravagant state expenditures on alcohol, which disrupted this trend and led to a general reshuffling of the market.

The next chapter of baijiu’s story will doubtless be written overseas. In the first decade of the twenty-first century three international spirits corporations—Diageo, LVMH, and Pernod Ricard—entered the baijiu market, with varying degrees of success. See Diageo and Pernod-Ricard. Early in the second decade, a handful of independent investors launched baijiu brands with the aim of expanding the category’s reach overseas. More are sure to follow, as bartenders discover the category and begin incorporating it into their menus.

Production
A distiller begins the process of making baijiu by washing and steaming the grains. After steaming, grains are spread out to cool on a stone platform. Once they have reached a temperature that will not inhibit yeast activity, qu is added to the grains and the fermentation begins.

Fermentation technique is one of the key distinctions between different styles of baijiu. In the southwestern provinces of Sichuan and Guizhou, as well as along much of the east coast, distillers bury and seal fermenting grains in large subterranean pits for at least a month. Elsewhere in China grains are fermented in large stone jars for days or weeks.

Once the mash has been collected, it is loaded into a pot still, usually the same device in which the initial steaming was performed. The base of the pot is a perforated surface, often covered with a layer of wheat chaff to prevent mash from slipping through. The pot is placed over boiling water, and as the steam elevates the mash’s temperature, alcoholic vapor rises from the top of the mash. At this point a lid is affixed to the pot that will collect the vapor and pipe it into a condenser, generally a coiled tube running through a tank of cold water. The workers collect the spirit from a spigot running from the condenser, discarding the head and the tail.

The spirit distilled from each pot of mash is stored and aged separately, traditionally in terracotta clay jars left in dark, humid cellars or caves. Clay is a highly porous material that allows for significant interaction between the spirit and its surrounding environment, which can help break down aldehydes and develop sweeter flavors by improving ester concentration. Lower-end baijiu is often aged in stainless steel containers. Although there are no official aging requirements for baijiu, most Chinese spirits are aged at least six months, and premium brands are typically aged at least three to five years.

All baijiu is blended before bottling. As baijiu is distilled in batches, the quality and taste of the distillate can vary greatly. With many styles of baijiu a mash will be fermented and distilled multiple times (sometimes with the addition of fresh grain), generating flavors ranging from sour to smoky. Thus in achieving the proper balance of flavors, the role of a distillery’s master blender is essential. Most distilleries create a range of blends, using more of their best batches in top-shelf products and often using neutral spirit as filler for lower-end products. Water is also added before bottling to reduce baijiu’s strength, with common ABVs ranging from 38 to 65 percent; premium products are almost always over 50 percent.

Classification of Baijiu

Today there are four principal styles of baijiu, grouped by fragrance: strong aroma, light aroma, sauce aroma, and rice aroma. There are also at least a dozen minor categories and subcategories, some so specific as to refer to the liquor of a single distillery. The government introduced this classification system in the late 1970s to replace a 1952 system that defined a category by its representative distillery (Moutai fragrance, Luzhou fragrance, etc.). Awkward though the names may be in literal English translation, the contemporary categories are defined by concrete differences in production. Strong-aroma-style baijiu uses sorghum and other grains fermented in subterranean mud pits, whereas sauce-aroma-style baijiu is made from a sorghum mash mixed with wheat-based qu, fermented in pits lined with stone bricks. See strong-aroma-style baijiu and sauce-aroma-style baijiu. Rice-aroma and light-aroma styles are both traditionally fermented in earthenware jars, but the former is distilled from rice fermented with small qu and the latter sorghum fermented with big qu. See rice-aroma-style baijiu and light-aroma-style baijiu. Also many light-aroma distilleries have adopted pit fermentation to increase yields. By mixing regional methods, distillers have produced new styles like small-qu light-aroma style, sesame-aroma style, and mixed-aroma style, to name but a few.

baijiu

Origins

Modern Baijiu

Classification of Baijiu

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