The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails Definition of China

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of spirits by volume, particularly those of the homegrown category known as baijiu. China has frequently conquered and been conquered by its neighbors and later fell victim to imperialist incursions, but it has retained a contiguous cultural identity throughout its long history. The nation’s stability has facilitated rapid innovation in the field of alcohol fermentation and distillation, and its cultural influence aided in the proliferation of these techniques across East Asia.

History

The origins of Chinese alcohol are murky. We have only a rough sketch of the first several millennia, stitched together from later histories, legends, and archaeological inference. As early as 7000 bce civilizations along the Yellow River began brewing the world’s oldest documented alcohol, and by the time Emperor Qin Shihuang unified China in 221 bce, the nation’s winemakers had already developed the technique of fermenting grains using naturally harvested yeast cultures, or qu. See qu. This technique produced alcoholic beverages far more potent—as high as 15 percent ABV—and more flavorful than the primitive brews that preceded it. This new drink, known as huangjiu, or “yellow wine,” remained the preferred tipple of the Chinese elite until the twentieth century, though it was never widely consumed by the peasantry. China has always had a large population and limited arable land, so the cereals used to brew huangjiu (principally rice, wheat, millet, and sorghum) were more prized as food sources. See cereal.

Historians disagree as to how and when the Chinese began distilling alcohol, but they believe that spirits were introduced to China as early as the second century ce and no later than the eleventh. See distillation, history of. Early Chinese spirits were probably similar to the arrack of their day but soon evolved into something more distinctive: shaojiu (“burnt wine”), or what we now call baijiu (“white spirits”). See arrack. With baijiu the Chinese peasant finally had a drink of his own, a rough-around-the-edges economic alternative to aristocratic huangjiu. Baijiu’s production required a similar expenditure of grain as huangjiu, but it was stupefyingly strong—sometimes exceeding 70 percent ABV.

Modern Chinese Alcohol

In the early twentieth century, a few baijiu distillers began applying a modern approach to their craft, but full-scale industrialization of Chinese alcohol did not begin until after the Chinese Revolution under Chairman Mao Zedong in 1949. Baijiu was formerly the drink of the proletariat, which perfectly suited the needs of the ruling Communist Party. The government consolidated numerous small family-run distilleries, some of which had operated independently for centuries, into massive state-run distilleries. By the 1950s, the Chinese state had created most of today’s leading baijiu producers. China had finally developed the capability to produce spirits on a massive scale, but most consumption was rationed and limited to provincial or regional spirits.

The Chinese alcohol industry began resembling a modern commercial enterprise following the death of Mao Zedong, with China’s so-called Reform and Opening Up policies of the late 1970s and early 1980s. With the reintroduction of private ownership and market economics, the state-run distilleries began to compete for hundreds of millions of new consumers by diversifying their products, improving old recipes, and inventing entire new spirit categories. National brands gained currency, and new distilleries opened. During the first three decades of this experiment, the Chinese spirits industry experienced rapid profit growth, largely on the strength of large government orders, and by 2012 some estimates suggested that Chinese distillers were producing more than 11 billion liters each year, a greater volume than the global production of vodka and whisky combined.

Diageo and Pernod-Ricard.

At the outset of the twenty-first century, alcohol’s place in Chinese society reflects a number of larger social trends, namely, a generational divide between tradition and modernity, nationalism and globalization. Chinese drinks like baijiu and huangjiu are as popular as ever, but their consumption is almost exclusively limited to traditional Chinese meals and banquets. Foreign drinks are served at international venues, like bars, nightclubs, and the ever-popular karaoke parlor, or KTV. Moreover, younger generations are eschewing baijiu for its less aggressively flavored and lower-proof foreign counterparts. Various attempts are underway to reverse this trend, such as a move toward incorporating baijiu into cocktail menus and improving its visibility overseas, but only time will determine the viability of this approach.

China

History

Modern Chinese Alcohol

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