Though I am a native of Shandong, a coastal province in eastern China, I knew something about yellow wine when I grew up. Shandong is a giant producer of wines: spirits, beers, and grape wines, and a yellow wine, which I tried and found it sweet and an additional flavor of something burnt. In my college years in Shandong, I often visited a college teacher who came from Xiaoshan, now a district of Hangzhou. I sipped some Jiafan yellow wine at his home. I came to work and live in Hangzhou shortly after the beginning of the new century. When I first went back to Shandong for a home visit, I brought two bottles of yellow wine to him as gift. In the first years in Zhejiang, I mistakenly thought Jiafan was all there was to know about Shaoxing yellow wine. Gradually, however, I noticed various wine shops in Hangzhou selling different kinds of yellow wine from Shaoxing. Yet, these differences remained mysterious to me.
●產(chǎn)自紹興女兒紅釀酒有限公司的女兒紅酒。At a lunch during a visit to Shaoxing, I tried two kinds of Gu Yue Long Shan yellow wine, one aged for three years and one aged for five years. After the lunch, I visited China Yellow Wine Museum where there is a cavernous wine cellar and a workshop where yellow wine is made manually in a traditional way. A wine expert who is a graduate of Zhejiang University took me around and gave me a detailed account of yellow wine and Shaoxing yellow wine. The explanation was comprehensive and thorough for an outsider like me who knew little about the yellow wine produced in Shaoxing. I learned that there are four kinds of wine differentiated according to their dryness or sweetness. Later I consulted Song Xianzhang, a food expert with profound knowledge of cuisines in Jiangnan, and Zhang Shengli, a native of Shaoxing and playwright, about Shaoxing yellow wine. They gave me insights into yellow wine from different perspectives. According to Song, the yellow wine of Shaoxing dates back to 2,500 years ago. Wineries in Shaoxing use the water of the Jianhu Lake. All the 72 rivers and streams around the mountains in Shaoxing flow into the Jianhu Lake.
●浙江紹興東浦黃酒小鎮(zhèn)的一條小河上，船里裝滿了黃酒。The water contains trace elements and enzymes, whose natural combination and quantities you can’t find anywhere else. Yellow wine is also made in Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Japan, but theirs lack the special flavor native to Shaoxing. Song says that leading wineries in Shaoxing have tested the water and they have detailed reports of what they found in the water of Jianhu Lake. Gu Yue Long Shan (Literally, Ancient Yue, Dragon Mountain) and Kuaijishan (Kuaiji Mountain) are well known in China because the two brands are the main wine brands on domestic markets. Ta Pai (Pagoda Brand) wine is largely exported to overseas markets and is therefore not so popular at home. Song points out, however, Ta Pai is a better yellow wine essentially because it occupies the best location where it can tap into the best water resource. Zhang Shengli says he first experienced the taste of yellow wine when he was only 30 days old. At the celebration dinner, his father dipped a chopstick into yellow wine and put the tip of the chopstick between the baby’s lips so that the baby could have the first touch of the water from hometown. Zhang says his drinking age is only 30 days short of his real age. While talking about enjoying yellow wine, he says half drunken and half sober is the best pleasure a drinker can enjoy. When one is half drunken and half sober, one feels good and the pleasure is more than words can describe and convey. END
