A Century of Rice Wine Culture

The period marking the start of winter has just passed, and Mama Tao, who lives in the Tahua Military Dependents Community in Taoyuan, has started making the luwei (dishes in sauce or gravy) that her children and grandchildren so love. We watch as she fills her pot with cattle tendons, ox stomach, chicken gizzards, dried tofu, and seaweed, plus spices, soy sauce, garlic, and sugar. Then she empties most of a bottle of rice wine into the mixture. "Some things come out OK with shaoxing wine, but luwei only tastes good if you make it with rice wine," she avers as she mixes and turns the luwei in the pot. Taking on a more pointed tone, she adds, "Now that rice wine is up to NT$130 a bottle, I haven't even made any shaojiuji this winter."

Mutton hot pot Rice wine is a vital cooking ingredient that no homemaker can do without.

The Lunar New Year falls early this year, with New Year's Eve on the last day of January. Mothers have already begun calculating what they are going to serve for the holiday: Start with some fried pork strips and "drunken chicken" for cold appetizers. Next some shrimp stewed in rice wine, "three cups" small rolls, braised fish, and fugui cattle tendon, plus some scallops with Chinese kale on the side. And a steaming mutton hot pot kept going on the table. For dessert, how about a little steamed rice cake flavored with rice wine, homophonous for "upwards with each step." A New Year's menu like this, in which each and every dish requires rice wine, would, added all together, use up more than three 600-ml bottles.

Alcohol is an integral part of Chinese rituals. The people of Taiwan, most of whom are from the Han ethnic group, are no exception. In Chinese tradition, wine is required for a ceremony to take on "ritual" meaning, and fails to have this meaning if there is no alcohol present. The characters for a kind of ritual vessel called a zun, and for the words "rite" and chieftain, seen in tortoise shell inscriptions and on bronzes from earliest antiquity, are all derivatives of the character you, an early version of the modern character for wine.

China's rice-wine culture goes back virtually as far as its rice culture, with grain alcohol dating back to the era of Shen Nong 7000 years ago. With rice the staple crop in China, fermented rice was thus the great ancestor of all Chinese liquor. In the ancient text Su Wen there is a record of a debate between the legendary Emperor Huangdi (21st century BCE) and Qi Bo (considered one of the founders of the medical profession in China) over which of five grains makes the best alcohol.

The "Wei Ce" chapter of the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE-8 CE) work Stratagems of the Warring States includes the following story, said to have taken place during the reign of the Emperor Yu (founder of the Xia dynasty, going back roughly two millennia): Yu was delighted by the taste of a wine made by Yi Di. But fearing that he would become overly intoxicated with liquor and thus commit errors in affairs of state, he exiled Yi Di to a remote place, and warned: "In future generations wine will be the undoing of the country." While legend does not tell us what the staple food of the era of Yu was, Yu had conquered the "land of the Miao people" (modern Yunnan and Guizhou), expanding his border to the Yangtze River region, rich in rice and fish, so it is very possible that Yi Di's concoction that so impressed Yu was rice wine.

Wine vessels formally became ritual objects in the Shang (1750-1040 BCE) and Zhou (1040-771 BCE) dynasties, and constitute the majority of bronze objects unearthed from that era. A chapter in the Book of Rites, which instructs people on what rituals to follow in each temporal period of the Chinese year says: Upon the arrival of winter, orders are to be given to the official in charge of wine to prepare sorghum and rice and choose an appropriate time to make the ferment for brewing. There must be cleanliness in the process of steeping and distilling, the water must be sweet and pure, implements must be of the highest quality, and the fire must be controlled at appropriate levels. If the above conditions are observed, there will be no errors.

The Northern Wei (386-534 AD) work Important Arts of the Ordinary People, which contains detailed information about various products and techniques, has a "Chapter on Wine Making" with a section devoted exclusively to describing in detail how people fermented alcohol out of rice in the spring.

Rice wine, with the power to "dispel malevolent forces," is an important tool for priests performing rituals.

While it is true to say that the history of the making of wine in China can be measured in millennia, it is nonetheless the case that the rice wine consumed in ancient times and the "red label" so familiar to modern Taiwanese are very different. The biggest difference is that according to ancient texts rice was only fermented and pressed, but the resulting mash was not distilled. This type of wine, commonly called yellow or red, was the type consumed in ancient times.

If you distill yellow alcohol, the colorless, potent alcohol that results is called "white alcohol" by Chinese. The longer the distilling process, the higher the alcohol content, with alcohol so pure that you can set it alight being called shaojiu or "burning alcohol." There are various theories about the history of white alcohol, but we know for sure, based on a bronze distilling apparatus unearthed in Qinglong Rural Township in Hebei Province in mainland China, that Chinese had the ability to manufacture shaojiu as early as eight hundred years ago (the Gaozong reign of the Song dynasty).

To analyze the brewing process chemically, alcohol (ethanol) is the product of fermentation of sugar. For fruit wines, fructose or glucose can, through yeast, directly ferment into alcohol. As for grain alcohols, first the starch must be decomposed to become fructose or maltose (malt sugar). After that, it can be fermented into alcohol.

Did you ever notice that sometimes rice tastes sweet when you chew it? That is because through saliva the starch is turned into sugar. Before the arrival of Han Chinese in Taiwan, indigenous people used saliva to ferment alcohol. The author of the 1697 work Record of a Journey Across a Small Sea, Yu Yonghe, wrote a verse on the subject of "barbarian women," which documents this most common form of alcohol brewing among Taiwan's Aborigines: "It is said that barbarian wives have marvelous skills; they chew rice until it is a juice, and use a bamboo tube as a wine jar, then hang it indoors. When a guest comes they open the bamboo tube and urge the guest to try some."

In the 61st year of the Kangxi Emperor (1772), Huang Shujing, the first imperial censor to visit Taiwan, left a vivid verse in his Record of a Posting Beyond the Taiwan Sea: "[The Aborigines] come to play games and trade; they have ginger, and trade it for glutinous rice, which they make into wine, which they offer to officials when they come to visit. After the wine is finished, they hunt a deer, and again come to trade."

Thus Pingpu (Plains) Aborigines of that era, besides making alcohol from millet (their staple grain), also made wine from glutinous rice acquired from Han Chinese immigrants. Because of the scarcity of its raw material and the relatively longer time required for its production, rice wine was considered more precious than millet wine. It was ordinarily kept in storage until the arrival of a distinguished visitor, when it would be brought out and served to honor the guest. Among Taiwan's indigenous people, the brewing of alcohol was mainly the responsibility of women, and the making of good wine was considered, alongside weaving, planting, and poultry raising, to be one of the most important virtues of Pingpu women.

Sesame oil chicken, which includes rice wine and ginger, is an essential part of the diet of every woman doing her "month sitting" of convalescence from giving birth.

The brewing of rice wine is quite simple, and Taiwan is an area where rice grows readily. When the early pioneering Han Chinese immigrants came to Taiwan, they naturally carried forward the traditions of their Cantonese and Fukienese (Minnan) ancestors of consuming mainly rice wine. Each time the Lunar New Year arrived, people would choose the best rice and brew their own rice wine. This beverage goes by a special name in the Minnan dialect which means "harvesting the spring wine."

Data from the Japanese colonial era shows that rice wine accounted for over 60% of all liquor consumed. Before the imposition of taxes on alcohol, there were over 1000 distilleries in Taiwan, and even after the initiation of taxes there were still more than 200. In those days most brewing was by the zailai method: They first cooked a pot of rice and allowed it to cool. Then they sprinkled on peka (white koji), then kneaded this somewhat moldy mixture in with other cooked rice and placed the mixture in a cask to ferment. Later they distilled it to end up with colorless white alcohol. Because the peka used among ordinary citizens contained many impurities, not only did each distillery have a different flavor, the rate of failure (in which the result was acidic) was quite high.

Before the introduction of a monopoly on the making of alcohol, there was a very interesting sideline to the private distilleries-hog raising. Pigs were fed with the grain left over after the distilling out of the alcohol. Pigs raised on these grains became more plump and appetizing, and commanded the highest prices in the market. This is why there was often a special pen for raising pigs right next to a distillery, a phenomenon that the Japanese colonizers found appalling.

Fried chuanqi (an herb) with sesame oil Rice wine is a vital cooking ingredient that no homemaker can do without.

In 1922, the colonial authorities forcibly purchased the larger private distilleries and implemented a monopoly system. Under this system, the Japanese devoted considerable effort to raising the quality of fermenting agents, but they continued to use the old zailai approach to brewing.

In 1930, however, there was a revolutionary change in the way rice wine was manufactured in Taiwan. Kamatani Shiunichi, a technician from the alcohol monopoly's research division, made a trip to French-controlled Vietnam where he visited a distillery on the outskirts of Saigon. There he discovered that the distillery was using the "Amylo process." This required the separating out from traditional peka of two types of bacteria with especially powerful sugar-conversion capability, and breeding these bacteria in huge numbers in sealed vats. These bacteria not only allowed a reduction in both raw materials and processing time, but the process could be done by machine, vastly increasing production volume. Later other types of liquor such as honglu (red-tinted) wine and "sweet wine" converted to this process.

Once the Amylo process was successfully introduced in 1931, Taiwan rice wine became highly standardized. Though the taste was not like wine made using the traditional zailai approach with its fermentation by a hodgepodge of bacteria, it became the flavor to which everyone eventually got accustomed.

At first the Japanese monopoly divided its rice wine into three numbered grades. Later, Grade 2 rice wine (20.5% alcohol content) was renamed Red Label. (This moniker carried over to the post-colonial era, because postwar rice wine with this level of alcohol, though not actually named "Red Label," still had a red colored label.) Grade 3 rice wine (25.5%) meanwhile, was tagged Gold Label, and later a Silver Label variety (25%) was added.

The Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Company (TTWC), the present-day incarnation of the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau (TTWMB), which was itself the successor to the Japanese monopoly, still considers the formula for "red label" to be top secret. Nonetheless, one retired senior employee reveals: "To reduce costs, during the Japanese colonial era, red label was converted to a mixture of 60% rice wine with 40% cane spirit, and this has continued to the present day." In fact, Japanese sake, of which people in Taiwan are fond, is also a hybrid-one part rice wine with two parts ethanol.

In 1988, the TTWMB came out with a pure rice wine, called Daoxiang (a name which, confusingly, it shares with many other rice wines produced both before and since by the TTWMB and TTWC). Theoretically, a rice wine unadulterated by ethanol should be more aromatic and tasty. But people still preferred the original formula. After this Daoxiang came on the market, it sold only about one million cases (of one dozen bottles each) per year, not even remotely close to the 17-million-plus cases of red label sold per annum. In 1999, this all-rice version of Daoxiang made its bow and left the stage.

Shrimp flambee Rice wine is a vital cooking ingredient that no homemaker can do without.

In the early days after the return of Taiwan to Chinese rule in 1945, conditions were chaotic, and there was much to be done. The monopoly system and production methods and formulas for alcohol were simply carried over from the Japanese colonial era. However, after many years of war, rice was in short supply, and the red-label rice wine made in the early days of Chinese rule also included taro and potato mash, and for a brief time, to reduce costs, the proportion of rice wine to cane spirit was altered to 4:6.

"At that time the most common and inexpensive type of liquor was taibai. Rice wine was considered middle grade," says Yang Yen-mian, now in her 60s, whose family has been running a small dry goods store in Suao Township in Ilan County for three generations. Taibai, also called bailu, was also a kind of rice wine, but with higher ethanol content. Yang remembers that taibai was packaged in large jars, and could be sold by the glass. At dusk, farmers and laborers just finishing work would bring a small cup to buy some. "At that time, families that were well-off used rice wine for women taking their 'month sitting' to recuperate from having a child, while ordinary people used taibai," recalls Yang. Meanwhile, for things like religious ceremonies or weddings, there was the higher-standard honglu wine, tinted an auspicious and celebratory red.

Around the 1970s, with the takeoff of Taiwan's economy, red label became the preferred tipple of the masses, and taibai went out of production. In consideration of the widespread popularity of rice wine and of its importance in cooking, the TTWMB adopted a policy of keeping the price low. From 1977 to 1996, it stayed at NT$16 per bottle. In 1990, then-TTWMB head Wu Poh-hsiung was forced to step down when rice wine went from NT$16 to NT$20 per bottle, and the price was returned to its original level.

While the price was fixed, the national standard of living continued to improve, and red-label rice wine gradually shifted from being mainly a drinking wine to mainly a cooking wine, and the amount used increased sharply. According to TTWMB statistics, sales of red label hit 10 million cases for the first time in 1972. In 1974, there was even a wave of hoarding after rumors that the price of rice wine would go up, leading to shortages. The TTWMB took out an ad in the Central Daily News stating that sales of rice wine had increased by 28.2% over the previous year, and that to meet market demand and put people's fears to rest, monthly production would be increased by 200,000 cases.

Roast kidney with wine Rice wine is a vital cooking ingredient that no homemaker can do without.

"Back in the 1960s, it was hard just staying warm and getting enough to eat, so alcohol was considered a luxury, and people would only drink a little at celebrations or get-togethers, so how could people bear to use it for cooking?" asks Lai Shung-tang, director of the Liquor Division at the TTWC. Asked about popular dishes like shaojiuji, which requires two or three bottles of rice wine to prepare and which is set afire on the table, thus burning off all the ethanol, Lai, who is personally involved in the making of the wine, can only sigh: "What a waste."

Over the last 20 years, the sales division of the TTWMB/TTWC has instructed its branches to do an annual survey of how rice wine is employed. For many years now, cooking has accounted for more than 80% of all the rice wine consumed.

With a state of war now declared in the rice wine market, Lai Shun-tang cannot help but put in a plug on behalf of TTWC rice wine. He notes that in the past, because the "head" and "tail" batches of the wine contained harmful components, such as benzyl alcohol or heavy metals, causing headaches in many people, citizens nicknamed rice wine the "little old head muddler." The TTWMB became the only organization with experience in economically discarding the "head" while keeping the "middle" in the process of distillation. "Though rice wine is cheap, today rice-wine brewing requires great skill, and it can't be seen as a crudely manufactured alcohol," says Lai. Moreover, the TTWMB in 1968 invested more than NT$100 million to purchase special purifying equipment, ensuring that the cane spirit mixed into the rice wine was cleansed of all harmful matter and no longer carried a pungent odor.

Because of the high quality of red label and because it staked out its territory earliest and became customary, even though today (rechristened Daoxiang 40 proof) it costs NT$135 per bottle, the much cheaper Daoxiang cooking wines introduced by TTWC have not been able to succeed to its beloved status in the hearts of citizens.

The history of rice wine goes as far back as the earliest rice civilization. The photo shows an extract from instructions on how to make rice wine published during the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE).

The aroma of rice wine reminds Taiwanese of "mother." Even as their mothers are "sitting for a month" to recuperate from childbirth, Taiwanese newborns get their first taste of wine through mother's milk. According to custom, a woman cannot drink water during her convalescence, so wine replaces water. Some even go so far as to prohibit new mothers from bathing, allowing them only to sponge down with a combination of wine and hot water. This is why when the TTWMB was forced to begin rationing of red label in the late 1990s, families with new infants enjoyed the privilege of purchasing 48 bottles at a time.

Chang Min-ju, founder of a business that delivers tonic foods to convalescing new moms (and who is also granddaughter of the famous Sino-Japanese doctor Chuang Shu-chi) explains: After birth, the mother's viscera are loose, and if she absorbs too much water this will cause the viscera to collapse downward, creating an extrusion of the stomach, so-called "water weight gain."

The solution to this problem is "rice-wine water." You can boil three bottles of rice wine down into one bottle of "rice-wine water," which contains virtually no alcohol, and use this to make soup or sesame chicken to relieve thirst. "You must remember that alcohol per se is not good for a new mother," states Chang.

By Chang's calculations, a woman taking her "month sitting" needs 160 bottles of rice-wine water, which is to say nearly 500 bottles of rice wine. Since the rising price of rice wine hits new mothers the hardest, the TTWC has come out with its own "rice-wine water" (only one percent alcohol content), while many private businesses have come out with similar rice-wine by-products that are completely unique to Taiwan.

However, Chen Chun-che, a practitioner of Chinese medicine, reminds us that consumption of large volumes of rice-wine water, even if it only has one percent ethanol, still places a burden on the kidneys and liver. On average, women who have just given birth consume about 60 litres of rice-wine water, which amounts to 600 cc of ethanol, a large enough amount to bring on acute pancreatitis.

Besides the existing 40-proof Daoxiang cooking wine, the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Company is now offering 80-proof and 120-proof versions to give consumers more options.

According to theories of Chinese medicine, alcohol can help the circulation of the blood and open up the body's meridians to a smooth flow of qi. The Book of the Former Han, compiled in 83 CE, includes the remark, "Alcohol has the benefits of one hundred medicines." Indeed, the Chinese character for the practice of medicine includes the character for alcohol, evidence of a long relationship between the two. The Ming dynasty work Critical Information for Evaluating and Collecting Medicinal Ingredients points out: "Alcohol is mainly of use as a medicine. It can kill malevolent humours and eradicate toxins." There are records of the medicinal uses of alcohol in China even on ancient tortoise shells dating back to the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

"Alcohol is a good natural solvent, enabling one to get a higher proportion of the therapeutic content out of the raw materials of Chinese medicine," Chen Chun-che says. "To bring out medicinal properties, the brew should have a moderate alcohol content be between 20 and 40%, definitely not more, so rice wine is certainly the best choice."

Chen also relates a method for making medicinal wine that can completely bring out the therapeutic benefits of medicine. First soak the desired Chinese medicine in 40-proof rice wine (i.e. rice wine with 20% alcohol content). After one week add a bottle of 100-proof alcohol to once again "soak out" its medicinal properties. After one month, filter out the medicinal wine and add a little crystal sugar to ferment, so that the longer you store the wine the more aromatic it becomes. There is often a jug of homemade medicinal wine in Taiwanese abodes, a glass of which comes in handy when the weather gets cold. Taken just before going to bed, it helps the circulation of the blood and qi, warms the hands and feet, and leaves a sweet aftertaste, with the effects lasting until morning.

Once the weather turns cold, Taipei resident Chang Heng, cutting down on meat as so many people seem to be doing these days, often asks his wife to whip up a bowl of rich and fragrant "sesame oil egg," which also includes ginger and rice wine, as a little snack. You have to smile when you hear him confess how he gets such a powerful craving for rice-wine dishes like this one. But when you think about it, isn't this what the long history of rice wine culture really comes down to?

"Four divinities" soup Rice wine is a vital cooking ingredient that no homemaker can do without.

After the prohibition of private distilling, low-cost rice wine largely replaced millet wine as the tipple of choice in Aboriginal society.