Wine in China has a history of more than 2,000 years.
Prehistory edit
The history of Chinese grape wine has been dated back more than 4,600 years. In 1995, a joint Sino-USA archeology team including archaeologists from the Archeology Research Institute of Shandong University and American archaeologists under the leadership of Professor Fang Hui (方辉) investigated the two archaeological sites 20 km to the northeast of Rizhao, and discovered the remnants of a variety of alcoholic beverages including grape wine, rice wine, mead, and several mixed beverages of these wines. Out of more than two hundred ceramic pots discovered at the sites, seven were specifically used for grape wine. Remnants of grape seeds were also discovered.[1] If grape wine consumption was once present in Bronze Age China, however, it was replaced by consumption of a range of alcoholic beverages made from sorghum, millet, rice, and fruits such as lychee or Asian plum.
Ancient times edit
- "The Song of the Grape" (葡萄歌), by Liu Yuxi (772–842)
- 自言我晉人 We men of Tsin [Jin 晉 = Shanxi], such grapes so fair,
- 種此如種玉 Do cultivate as gems most rare;
- 釀之成美酒 Of these delicious wine we make,
- 令人飲不足 For which men ne'er their thirst can slake.
- 爲君持一鬥 Take but a measure of this wine,
- 往取涼州牧 And Liang-chow's [= Liangzhou's] rule is surely thine.[2]
In the 130s and 120s BC, a Chinese imperial envoy of the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) named Zhang Qian opened diplomatic relations with several Central Asian kingdoms, some of which produced grape wine. By the end of the second century BC, Han envoys had brought grape seeds from the wine-loving kingdom of Dayuan (Ferghana in modern Uzbekistan) back to China and had them planted on imperial lands near the capital Chang'an (near modern-day Xi'an in Shaanxi province).[3] The Shennong Bencao Jing, a work on materia medica compiled in the late Han, states that grapes could be used to produce wine.[4] In the Three Kingdoms era (220–280 AD), Wei emperor Cao Pi noted that grape wine "is sweeter than the wine made [from cereals] using ferments and sprouted grain. One recovers from it more easily when one has taken too much."[4] Grapes continued to be grown in the following centuries, notably in the northwestern region of Gansu, but were not used to produce wine on a large scale. Wine thus remained an exotic product known by few people.[5]
Not until the Tang dynasty (618–907) did the consumption of grape wines become more common. Meng Shen's Materia dietetica (Shiliao bencao 食療本草) and the government-sponsored Newly Compiled Materia Medica (Xinxiu bencao 新修本草; 652) records that Tang people produced naturally fermented wine.
After the Tang conquest of Gaochang – an oasis state on the Silk Road located near Turfan in modern Xinjiang – in 641, China obtained the seeds of an elongated grape called "mare teat" or "horse nipple" (maru 馬乳) and learned from Gaochang a "method of wine making" (jiu fa 酒法).[6] It is not clear, however, whether this method consisted in fermenting grape juice with the yeast naturally found in the fruit's skin, in fermentation of grape juice assisted by a cereal-based ferment, or in the distillation of a brandy-style alcohol from fermented grape juice.
Nevertheless, several Tang poets versified on grape wine, celebrating wine from the "Western Regions" – that from Liangzhou was particularly noted – or from Taiyuan in Shanxi, the latter of which produced wine made from the "mare teat" grape.[7]
Late imperial times edit
Modern times edit
China's "first modern winery" was founded in 1892 near the treaty port of Chefoo (now called Yantai) by the overseas Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Bishi.[8]
References edit
Notes edit
- ^ History of Chinese wine (in Chinese) [dead link]
- ^ Sampson 1869, p. 52, cited in Shafer 1963, p. 145.
- ^ Sima 1993, pp. 244–45 ("The Han envoys brought back grape and alfalfa seeds to China and the emperor for the first time tried growing these plants in areas of rich soil. Later, when the Han acquired large numbers of the 'heavenly horses' and the envoys from foreign states began to arrive with their retinues, the lands on all sides of the emperor's summer palace and pleasure towers were planted with grapes and alfalfa as far as the eye could see." [Shiji, chap. 123]); Black 2006, p. 167 ("it seems that grape seeds were brought back from Ferghana in modern Uzbekistan by General Chang Chien [Zhang Qian] during the Han dynasty between 136 and 121 BC and planted in Xinjiang and Shaanxi (Xian)").
- ^ a b Huang 2000, p. 240.
- ^ Huang 2000, pp. 240–1, citing Tao Hongjing's Mingyi Bielu 名醫別錄 for the claim that vines were successfully grown in several parts of Gansu, notably in Dunhuang.
- ^ Huang 2000, p. 241.
- ^ Huang 2000, pp. 241–2.
- ^ Godley 1986, p. 383.
Works cited edit
- Black, Jeremy (2006), "China – Ancient China", in Robinson, Jancis (ed.) (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Wine (Third ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 167–68, ISBN 978-0-19-860990-2.
{{citation}}:|editor-first=has generic name (help) - Godley, Michael R. (1986), "Bacchus in the East: The Chinese Grape Wine Industry, 1892–1938", Business History Review, 60 (3): 383–409, doi:10.2307/3115883, JSTOR 3115883. – via JSTOR (subscription required)
- Huang, H. T. (2000), Science & Civilisation in China, Volume VI: Biology and Biological Technology, Part 5: Fermentations and Food Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Sampson, Theos. (1869), "The Song of the Grape", Notes and Queries on China and Japan, 3: 52.
- Shafer, Edward H. (1963), The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-05462-8.
- Sima, Qian (1993) [100 BC], Records of the Grand Historian, Han Dynasty II, Translated by Burton Watson (revised ed.), New York: Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-08166-9. ISBN 978-0-231-08167-2 (paperback).
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