By Li Zi

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Shaoxing Yellow Wine: New Year Gift

By Li Zi

老酒的童趣Kids try their hands at making Shaoxing Wine.

“What? All the 100 cases are sold in a day?” the owner surnamed Wang comes into his shop and is surprised to be informed that the yellow wine he had just moved into the shop the day before had sold out already. Now he needs to call his supplier again for more cases of yellow wine. Wang runs a foodstuff wholesale business in Shaoxing. As Spring Festival approaches, his business becomes increasingly busy. Yellow wine is always the top choice on the gift list of businesspeople in Shaoxing where yellow wine is a tradition of more than 1,000 years.

I am looking around at this time of the year to see how wine sellers in Shaoxing are doing. Wang is one of the business owners I talk with.

He says, a businessman engaged in international business came in the other day and bought 80 cases of 20-year vintage Shaoxing Yellow Wine. The cases were meant as gifts for his business clients based in other cities. Wang says he has many such orders. Some wholesale businesses have much more and larger orders.

Wang started his retail business in the early 1980s when reform had just started and policies had been loosened so that entrepreneurs were allowed to set up their businesses. His small business sold wine, edible oil, vinegar, salt and such things for kitchen.

“Back then, customers brought their own bottles when they came in to buy wine. They just bought half a kilo. For Spring Festival, they bought two or three kilos. When people had more money, somebought wine in urns, 25 kilos in a big urn, to entertain their guests and give themselves a treat during the Spring Festival vacation. Then people stopped bringing their own bottles. They came in to buy bottled wine. Around the Spring Festival they bought cases of wine. Some people bought jars of wine as gifts. These artistic-looking jars look nice and cultured and the jars themselves are pretty for private collection.” It was during these years that Wang accumulated enough capital to set up a foodstuff shop. He began his wholesale deal when the new century came in.

瓶裝老酒Nowadays, the ancient yellow wine of Shaoxing comes in modern bottles.

He says that in the 1990s, the big urns disappeared and cooking wine began to come in plastic bags. Nowadays only villagers still make yellow wine in the traditional big urns. Though he sells yellow wine, he buys two urns of wine at his home village for Spring Festival banquets at home.

My conversation with Wang brings back my memory of childhood years in Shaoxing. I remember my mom hanging up the portraits of our ancestors ten days before the Spring Festival. A sacrificial ceremony was held and a wine party followed at home. On the 18th day of lunar January, these portraits were taken down and stashed away. Another ceremony was held, followed by another wine party. Friends, relatives and neighbors were all in for a good time.

In good old days, yellow wine was a must for Spring Festival. On the eve of the festival, people drank yellow wine to say goodbye to the previous year and welcome the arrival of the new year. As the last day marks the dividing line of the years, the drink on this day is called the year division drink. There must be at least ten cold dishes to go with the drink, each dish topped by a decorative radish slice for good luck.

Wang knows a lot more about customs and traditions of wine drinking. According to Wang, the New Year drinking binge started at dawn of the first day in the Han dynasty. In the Tang, people drank with the family at night and with neighbors during the day during the Spring Festival. In the Qing wine became popular on social occasions. And wine has been a gift since ancient times.

In the good old days, different brands of yellow wine were chosen for different food and on different occasions, just as how port wine goes in a big banquet in the west. Nowadays, the differences in yellow wine seem to be vanishing. I remember my dad mentioning what yellow wine went best with what food in what seasons. It was a long time ago.

Wang tells me that nowadays some brands dominate the market and people usually prefer wine that has been stored for many years. The more years a wine spends in the cell, the better it tastes and more it charges on the market. Usually there are yellow wines of three years, five years, ten years, and twenty years. The rarest are wines of 50 years and even 100 years.

Nowadays, yellow wine comes in various decorative bottles. Wine producers know how to make bottles more attractive as consumers buy wine for themselves and for their friends and relatives. These bottles need to look attractive. Wang knows: Good designs and good bottles sell fast during Spring Festival.

After my conversation with Wang, I look around in Shaoxing. There are wines packed in bottles made of pottery, glass, wood, bamboo, plastics. Pottery and glass are the dominant materials. Some of these bottles are designed to stay as artworks at home after wine inside is gone.