黄酒/ Yellow booze/ Rice wine

[wushijiao]

One of the specialties of the Jiangsu/Zhejiang/Shanghai area is 黄酒, which is underrated by most foreigners who live in China． Baijiu (白酒）, China's other famous spirit, can range from paint-remover rancid to fairly sweet, unoffensive and artificially potpouri-ish, but still has a very high degree of alcohol (35-60%).

Huangjiu, in contrast, has a much lower degree of alcohol, 11--15%. The base ingredient is rice in most Huangjius, but honey and 枸杞 (the small red things in hotpot) are also included. Huangjiu is usually aged 3-5 years, a bit like whiskey. So the taste is usually sweet, but mellow.

A few of good brands are 和酒，君再来，绍兴，and 侬好．　

Does anyone else drink huangjiu? What other brands do you like? 　

[marcopolo79]

It doesn't matter so much which brand it is as much as how you drink it, 黃酒 should always be served heated with a slice of fresh ginger.

[Gary Soup]

I've been served it in small bowls at room temperature. It's also sometimes heated like sake. I don't particularly like it for drinking, but my wife would be lost without Shaoxing jiu for cooking. I think it's become pretty much the standard wine for cooking all over China.

[Jacko]

Yellow wine and Shaoxing is basically the same thing right? I mean same category, with Shaoxing being the most famous.

[bhchao]

Businessweek recently posted an article about the growth in foreign-wine imports in China, and the decline of the traditional grain-based alcohol market.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/feb2005/nf20050210_9814_db053.htm

[wushijiao]

Interesting. The main problem with the foreign wine industry in China is the huge import tax they slap on them (I think it's about 100%)! A bottle you would find in the US for $5 is $10 here. So, if foreign wines were priced correctly, there would be mainy decent bottles (Australian Shiraz/Cab mixes, decent, cheap Chilean wine., ie.. Concha y Toro) at the 40-50 RMB level. Instead these same bottles are put at the 90-130RMB the level. A huge jump.

The other problem is, of course, Chinese people have a very sweet palate. A lot of the wine here tastes like grape Fanta with a shot of vodka put in it. However, in the late '60's America was equally unsophisticated as a wine market. Now it is one of the most knowledgable, and diverse wine markets on earth. So, I'm hopefull that a similar thing could happen in China.

Wine traditionalists in Europe, especially in France, often bemoan how the American market has shifted the way Europeans produce wine. The French generally prefer complex, balanced wines, while Americans, perhaps due to Robert Parker's influence, like big, muscular, alcoholic reds (like a huge, inky Californian Zin.) It is interesting to speculate on how another potentially huge market of 100,000,000 people could shift wine production methods.

However, it would be a shame to forsake huangjiu in blind pursuit of things foreign. For now, I'll take a good bottle of huang at 15 RMB over a ludicrously overpriced Cab at 120RMB. Call me a xiaoqi.