Baijiu history

Baijiu, China's national spirit, is distilled from fermented grains, most often sorghum, with a solid-state method found nowhere else in the world. When distillation began in China is still debated, but the 16th-century physician Li Shizhen wrote that 'shaojiu', fire wine, was not an ancient drink and dated its method to the Yuan dynasty. Its great houses trace their roots back centuries. Luzhou Laojiao's fermentation pits date from 1573 and are still in use; Fengxiang in Shaanxi was famous for its xifengjiu by the early 17th century; and under the Qing, salt merchants and officials in the town of Maotai, Guizhou, helped shape the sauce aroma style that is now China's most prestigious. The 20th century turned these local spirits into national institutions. Maotai won a medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition; in the early 1950s local distilleries were merged into state companies; and from 1952 national appraisals named the 'famous spirits' whose names still dominate the market. Baijiu became the drink of banquets and diplomacy, never more famously than when Zhou Enlai toasted Richard Nixon with Moutai in 1972. Since then baijiu has modernised without losing its rituals. Scientists codified the aroma types, producers created softer and lower-strength styles for new drinkers, and the oldest pits and methods were protected as cultural heritage. Baijiu is the most-consumed spirit in the world by volume, yet outside China it is still waiting to be discovered.