The Wine Town

The Wine Town

In Shaoxing, wine yeast and wheat koji are made in lunar July and August, respectively. On Lidong, or the start of winter, raw materials are put into production and the brewing process starts. Pressing and decocting start on Lichun (start of spring) of the following year. At this time of year, along the river banks of the town, you can flnd scenes of winemakers busy flltering and boiling to pasteurise their rice wine.

Text by Wang Yuanchang Photos by Yuan Yun, Wang Yuanchang & Shen Haibin Translation by Leo

在紹興，農歷七月做酒藥、八月做麥曲，立冬開釀，到翌年﹃立春﹄時開始榨酒，江南的湖濱水畔一幅幅立體的﹃冬釀春榨圖﹄呈現眼前。

酒鄉記

The rice wine, featuring a rich, sweet taste, dates back even further than Shaoxing, an ancient town in Zhejiang that has been thriving at its present site for 2,500 years. It is the flrm belief of local people that only the water from Jianhu Lake can produce authentic Shaoxing rice wine. A visit to the centuries-old wine-producing villages that abut on the lake will surely take you back in time and give you the chance to see how wine was purely made by hand in the old days.

Making rice wine by hand is a highly demanding job that requires much physical labour. For the prefermentation stage alone, which is when glutinous rice is added to jars, each jar needs to be stirred over a hundred times a day, and for each stir, oneneeds to overcome resistance equal to a minimum of 25kg. Therefore, as each person takes care of more than a hundred jars every day, accumulatively he is stirring about 250 tons of weight per day. Meanwhile, steamed rice needs to be poured into to fermentation jars. Workers would wheel a “rice barrow” weighing more than 100kg back and forth up to one hundred times a day, amounting to a total distance of 10km a day.

It is by following these seemingly cumbersome procedures that Shaoxing locals produce rice wine true to their tradition, jar by jar.

We were driven to Sun Duan, a town along the banks of Jianhu Lake where the central wine warehouse of Gu Yue Long Shan Shaoxing Wine Co., Ltd. is located. We were amazed by the scale of this world's largest wine warehouse, a Guinness World Records winner. Inside this 150,000 square metre area are over 12 million jars containing tens of thousands of tons of rice wine aged from 5 to 50 years. For these spectacular rows of jars, if they were to be aligned in one line, it would be as long as nearly 8,000km, equal to the distance from Guangzhou to Beijing and back. The wine is breathing and ageing peacefully here. Through the magic of time, it will flnally achieve a flne quality with rich texture, a taste that one will never forget.

Coming back to downtown Shaoxing in the evening, we found a restaurant specialising in local cuisine on Cangqiao Street. We ordered a few signature dishes, including pickled flsh, liquorsoaked chicken, braised pork with preserved vegetables and fried stinky tofu, along with a jar of 10-year-old rice wine. According to the restaurant owner, Shaoxing locals have favoured preserved foods for generations. To make them, rice wine, especially that of top quality, is an indispensable ingredient.

Abounding with water, Shaoxing boasts as many as 10,610 ancient bridges scattered across the old downtown and suburbs. But even more than the number of bridges, the city is home to a wealth of elites, heroes, celebrities, and private advisors for administrative or martial leaders from all dynasties. In addition to famous poets and authors like Lu You and Lu Xun, historical flgures like Xi Shi (one of the Four Beauties of ancient China), Tang Wan and Qiu Jin, Shaoxing has nurtured 60 academicians ( Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering ) and 4 principals of Peking University.

Another important work about Shaoxing is the Chinese calligrapher Wang Xizhi's semi-cursive script, the The Orchid Pavilion. This piece of artwork, just like the city's reputable rice wine, has been handed down for more than a thousand years and will endure through ages to come.

醇厚甘甜的黃酒，要比這座2500年城址未變的古城紹興還要悠久。當地人堅信，只有鑒湖的水才能釀出地道的紹興黃酒。到鑒湖周邊那些數百年歷史的老釀酒區看上一眼，會讓人瞬間穿越回古老的手工歲月。

手工釀酒是強度很高的體力勞動，僅從前發酵階段，黏黏的糯米飯落缸后計算，每人每天看護著100余缸，每缸一天要攪動上百次，每攪動一次阻力至少25公斤，累計一天要攪動約250噸重量；將蒸過的飯運到發酵缸中，每人每天推著百余公斤的“送飯車”，跑動達百次，路程近10公里。

紹興人正是用這看起來笨重的傳統古法，一壇一壇釀著心底的味道。

我們乘車來到孫端鎮，走進位于鑒湖畔的世界最大黃酒酒庫、吉尼斯之最的古越龍山中央酒庫，感覺只有震撼。總面積約15萬平方米的酒庫里，1200余萬個盛著數萬噸紹興黃酒的大酒壇整齊碼放，氣勢恢弘，如果一字排開可以綿延近8000里。它們在這里均勻呼吸、慢慢成熟，滋生出舌尖上那揮之不去的醇香美味。

傍晚時分，回到紹興市區，在倉橋直街上找了一家紹菜館坐下，點了醉魚、糟雞、臘肉、霉干菜燜肉、油炸臭豆腐等幾個紹幫菜，外加一壇十年陳釀。聽老板娘講，世代紹興人傳承下來的味蕾獨鐘的臘味，樣樣都離不開黃酒調制，尤其要用紹興上乘的黃酒。

沒有厚重的文化積淀，哪來醇厚深邃的千年古酒？水網縱橫的紹興，老城和鄉下至今保留下來有10610座古橋，而這里孕育的精英豪杰更數不盡也說不完。除了眾所周知的書圣王羲之，陸游、魯迅等大文豪，美女西施、才女唐琬、俠女秋瑾，紹興還培育了60位兩院院士和4位北大校長。

“古來圣賢皆寂寞，唯有飲者留其名。”王羲之因“曲水流觴”而寫就的天下第一行書《蘭亭序》，與醴郁醇香的黃酒一起，流傳千古。