Luzhou Laojiao, whose name means 'old pit of Luzhou', is one of the founding houses of strong aroma baijiu, the most popular style in China. It is based in Luzhou, in Sichuan, a city with a winemaking tradition of about two thousand years.
The 1573 National Cellar
The distillery's greatest treasure is a group of fermentation pits that have been in continuous use since 1573, during the Ming dynasty: the oldest baijiu pits still working. In 1996 China's State Council declared them a national cultural relic, and since then they have been known as the National Cellar (国窖). They give their name to the distillery's top baijiu, Guojiao 1573. In 2013 the company's 1,619 century-old pits, 16 ancient brewing workshops and three ageing caves were also protected as national cultural relics.
Thousand-year pit, ten-thousand-year mash
Luzhou Laojiao is known as the pioneer of the method summed up as 'thousand-year pit, ten-thousand-year mash'. The grain ferments in earthen pits whose walls absorb microbes over time. After each distillation, a quarter of the mash is removed and replaced with fresh grain and qu, and the mash always returns to the same pit, so that each batch carries something of all those before it. A pit must be in continuous use for at least thirty years to be considered mature.
A modern company
The distillery was founded in its current form in 1951, when the government merged dozens of local distilleries. In 1959 it was commissioned to write the first technical manual for modern baijiu production, and in 2006 its traditional brewing method was listed as national intangible cultural heritage. Its spirits age in about 7 km of natural caves.