sauce-aroma-style baijiu is a spirit distilled from sorghum that has been fermented in stone-lined pits. It is the costliest variety of baijiu to produce and is prized by baijiu connoisseurs. The style is notable for rich, savory tastes and a lingering fragrance reminiscent of the Chinese culinary staple soy sauce, for which it is named.
Its origins lie in the remote village of Maotai, buried deep in the mountains of southwestern China’s Guizhou Province. During the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912), Maotai was strategically positioned along the Chishui River and served as a distribution center for the government’s salt monopoly. Though the region had an eclectic folk winemaking tradition, the salt merchants stationed there found local spirits wanting. The merchants recruited northern distillers to improve upon local pit-fermentation methods, and sauce-aroma was the happy result.
The ingredients are simple—wheat-based big qu and sorghum—but the production process is Byzantine. See qu. After qu is added to steamed sorghum, the mash is formed into waist-high mounds and left alone while fermentation begins. Once the distiller determines the grains are ready, the mash is shoveled into large pits lined with stone bricks and sealed with mud to finish fermenting over the course of a month. The mash is unloaded and distilled, then fresh grains are added to the spent mash, and the cycle begins anew. The process is repeated a total of seven times, and a full production cycle lasts about a year. The distillate from each stage is stored and aged separately in large, semipermeable clay jars for at least three years before the master blender combines them.
Sauce-aroma-style baijiu has enjoyed great success due as much to official patronage as to its complex and layered flavor. Kweichow Moutai, the style’s most famous brand, was a favorite of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, who made it the Chinese Communist Party’s official banquet baijiu for state dinners in the 1950s. See Kweichow Moutai.
Moutai: Globalization of a Chinese Icon. Kweichow Moutai, 2012.
Xu Ganrong and Bao Tongfa. Grandiose Survey of Chinese Alcoholic Drinks and Beverages (中国酒大观目录, Chinese and English versions). Jiangnan University, 1998.
By: Derek Sandhaus