Talk:Maotai/Archive 1

Archive 1

Varieties

I believe that the "Varieties" section belongs in the Chinese wine article. Maotai is only one variety of Chinese wine. Badagnani 01:58, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

"Sauce-flavored"?

"Sauce-flavored" should be explained. Why is it called this? Is is used in cooking? Badagnani 23:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Apparently, Chinese wine can be classified by their fragrances. Googling 酱香酒 found me a page talking about different Chinese wine categories: 中国酒的香型也很多，主要有以茅台为代表的酱香酒 (sauce fragrance)，以泸州老窖为代表的浓香酒 (heavy fragrance)，以山西汾酒为代表的清香酒 (light fragrance)，还有米香型 (rice fragrance)、蜂香型 (Honey fragrance) 等等，这些酒都是蒸溜酒. See also [1] for more on the fragrance classification. Not sure what "sauce" really mean, but I don't think it is related to cooking though. Kowloonese 00:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Reading what you've written, along with some information I've gleaned from Chinese friends as well as Internet articles, I think the system I devised for "distilled" and "non-distilled" categories isn't the main way Chinese wine is divided. There seem to be other systems, like "white" versus "yellow/red," or by fragrance, etc. It's quite complicated. Badagnani 03:25, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Interesting that 濃 ("thick," "concentrated") is the middle character in the Korean soup called "seollongtang" (雪濃湯). Badagnani 03:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Distribution

I don't have any info on this but that is why I came here to begin with on this subject. Perhaps someone knows where it is distributed...only in China, other countries, all provinces in China?? 66.82.112.1 20:23, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

The English version of their website doesn't seem to say anything about that, so why not send them an email? http://www.moutaichina.com/en/contact.html Please let us know what you find out. Badagnani 20:27, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Watermark

On authentic Moutai wine there is a watermark on the label. I think that we should put that in the article. I heard that people use authentic eyeglasses to see the watermark to prove that the Moutai is authentic. --—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.113.104.4 (talk • contribs)

dead link

"Moutai Label" link is dead, and now in chinese —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.170.151.152 (talk) 00:37, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Is it really?

The article says:

"It is one of China's official state banquet wines and claims to be one of the world's three best known liquors (together with whisky and cognac)."

Seems quite a bold statement on the part of the manufacturer. I suggest adding something to clarify that in fact vodka is probably among the three. I've been to China and I know Maotai, but to say it's one of the best known liquors in the world is plain wrong. Dawidbernard 15:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you read Chinese? If so, you can go through the official site (or use Babelfish to translate) and see if they do indeed say that. The PRC does represent 20 percent of the world's population. Whether it's true or not, if the company claims it in its official publicity materials, it's notable. Badagnani 17:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure they say this. The thing is, you can't really say that something is world-known if it is known mostly in one country, regardless of its size. The whole point of "being best known in the world" is about being recognized internationally. What I want to be done is to put this claim in context. If there is any reliable research into world best known liquors, it could be mentioned. Dawidbernard 21:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I suppose there would have to be a survey done (of a representative sample of the world's people) to determine this. Badagnani 22:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I had never heard of maotai until i came accross this obscure kissenger quote. i thought it was a punn on mao. to say that it is of the three best known liquors is absurd. to say there is three best known liquors is absurd. --—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.108.184.26 (talk • contribs)

It's the prestige brand of the most-consumed liquor in the world, outselling vodka, so there's certainly some merit to the case regardless of what you personally have seen marketed. It's certainly better-known within China than outside of it, but I'm sure there are stats on the company's export business (which might not be available) and marketing surveys addressing this topic (which should be). — LlywelynII 22:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Age of Maotai

Maotai comes in different ages. The most common ones are 15, 30 and 50 but what about 80 year old Maotai? How about the price of Maotai in general? Can this be included? I know 15 year old Maotai can sell as much as US$600, while 30 and 50 year old ones can sell as much as US$1400 and US$2200 in China —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.131.200.217 (talk) 06:34, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

If you have sources that are good, you should add a section about it, probably with its own heading. The highest grade of Maotai retails for 26,800 yuan (US$3,375). Badagnani (talk) 06:42, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to see the source for the prices for Maotai because I was personally there and purchased authentic 15 year old 1 Liter bottles for around $140 from very big reputable shopping centers. Also I was doing research for the 50 year old Maotai and people are pretty disdainful of the veracity of such a product (I'm sure it actually exists, but is it really 50 years old?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.12.138.146 (talk) 09:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Why is it that consumers would place more trust in a French brandy or Scottish Scotch whisky producer labeling their product as 18-year or 50-year or whatever, than a producer in mainland China? Badagnani (talk) 18:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

With respect, you're kidding, right? It's because currently Chinese producers have a very well-earned reputation for betraying the public. I don't really need to provide links to the lead paint, poisoned milk, and 山寨 production for you, do I? Some of these producers have very long histories (and some of those long histories are even genuine), but the scale of current production is an order of magnitude beyond anything they were doing in the past and it's understandable to be dubious. — LlywelynII 22:30, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

That said, if you paid $140 (RMB c. 1000) for the high-end Moutai within the last decade, you were very likely simply not drinking high-end Moutai: you were getting the cheap stuff at higher prices or something completely counterfeit. They have all those security measures on the bottles now for a reason. The prices are inflated for the domestic market (where Moutai is more famous, prized as a gift, and charged to expense accounts) but they can't let the laowais get it that cheaply or it'd throw off the domestic pricing. — LlywelynII 22:30, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Name

Welp, I was thinking of doing a RM to Moutai given that it's, y'know, the actual English name of the specific branded product being discussed. Vanilla Google shows the two usages to be about equal; but I guess it's more popular for ngram's works to just treat it as Chinese characters being translated. (Nice to see that "liquor" is at least more common than "wine" now though.)

There's some minor edit history at Moutai that should be merged over here if an admin has some free time. — LlywelynII 22:58, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 6 May 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. We seem clear on what an article on the company should be called (Moutai) and the article on the drink (Maotai), the question is actually what the scope of this article should be and I don't think there's a consensus there, although Cuchullain's final suggestion seems the most sensible on the face of it. In any case, discussion about the scope and splitting/merging can be continued outside of the RM (and may require someone to simply be bold). I'm closing this because discussion has petered out and it seems unlikely we'll actually reach a consensus on moving the article, but if anyone feels strongly about it drop me a note and I'll reopen it and give it a relist. Jenks24 (talk) 17:45, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

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Maotai → Moutai – WP:UE, WP:UCN; the English language name of this product is "Moutai", it is what is written on the label in English, [2] the company is called Moutai in the USA -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 07:03, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Oppose until evidence is presented that English books call the liquor Moutai. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:04, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment see below. — LlywelynII 11:38, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose per User:In ictu oculi without more evidence. This ngram shows maotai remains a popular spelling. I'm not sure if "Moutai" is supposed to be a regional dialect pronunciation or an archaic ad-hoc spelling but it doesn't seem all that common. —  AjaxSmack  04:46, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
  • If the article is to be only about the brand and not a type of spirit then I will not oppose a move; as User:LlywelynII notes, this is the company's chosen "English" name. —  AjaxSmack  01:47, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

• Comment see HERE and HERE and HERE, all supporting the Moutai spelling. The third reference likens its taste to a mixture of soy sauce, pear, walnut and almond. Please do not take offense, as my own sense of taste is not highly developed, but I liken the taste to a mixture of Quaker State motor oil and Drano. Lou Sander (talk) 23:51, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose In addition to the comments above, pinyin is standard for titles unless a standard English is established, as in "Chiang Kai-shek," etc. The examples given above are really only one, since they refer to the same brand, while the article lists many historical usages other than the branded version. But many thanks to @LlywelynII: for thoughtful information above. ch (talk)

• Support. It is the standard, official spelling of a branded product and should be our default, pending the company's adoption of pinyin.
  
  All of the objections above are in good faith but not very well taken. Pace @In ictu oculi:, the fact that Moutai was running neck-and-neck in Google should have been enough to quiet that objection but, if you really needed a link, there are plenty of English-language books that use the Moutai spelling. Pace @AjaxSmack:, the only "evidence" we need for the official name of a branded product is that producer's packaging and publications. Those currently exclusively use the Moutai spelling. In addition, you have a page of links now showing that it is not FRINGE in the least. Pace @CWH:, the company has established a standard English usage for its product.
  
  The valid objection here (and the reason I didn't start this process on my own above) is that the submitter's argument is wrong. Moutai just isn't the most COMMONNAME. Maotai is an informal carry-over of the Chinese usage since laowais generally avoid the stuff except among Chinese colleagues and since the old spelling doesn't match the Mandarin pronunciation people usually encounter. All the same, it's not uncommon enough to demote; it's the OFFICIALNAME of this specific product and we should use it and just mention the informal name prominently in the lead. It might be possible to FORK out a second article on Moutai-style baijiu but the SCOPE and TOPIC of this article is the branded product of a single company: the lead sentence even has a direct link to the guys' stock ticker, fer chrissakes. — LlywelynII 11:43, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Comment Christ has nothing to do with it! @LlywelynII:'s fair and cogent points make me rethink the question, however. I now realize that the problem is that the lead does not match the article, which needs to be recast. The lead is indeed about "Moutai," which is a brand of "Maotai." The body of the article is about "maotai." I hesitate to rewrite while we are working toward but have not reached a consensus. But an accurate lead would obviate the need for the move as well as remove commercial promotion. BTW, maotai is delicious!ch (talk) 18:23, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Comment This is exactly on point. The proper spelling depends on what the article is about. (If there isn't an article on the specific product, though, we do need one.) — LlywelynII 05:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. It's true that the company making the beverage, Kweichow Moutai, uses the old spellings when writing in the Latin letters.[3] However, English sources using the "Maotai" spelling for the liquor appear to be more common than those using "Moutai", as Ajax has shown.--Cúchullain ^t/c 16:40, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Let's not pretend this is really an "old" spelling. It didn't appear on bottles in 1958 or 1972. It may have been on bottles before the Red Chinese takeover but current usage seems to be a revival à la Peking University and Tsingtao Beer. The Taiwanese knockoff is spelt Mautai and these TTL products tend to have preserved actual historical spellings (e.g. Ng Ka Py). Far all I know, Mautai is the old spelling. —  AjaxSmack  01:47, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
    • That's interesting but the age of the spelling doesn't really matter, I think. It's the branded spelling, so it's just a question of SCOPE. — LlywelynII 05:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

This says that it is the old spelling: "Kweichow Moutai" is the "antiquated Romanization of Guizhou Maotai". The Chinese spelling has been the same throughout, the only question is which Latin spelling is more common in English; the above ngram suggests that it's Maotai.--Cúchullain ^t/c 16:43, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

As for the scope, that's really the issue. There's not really any distinction between the company and the type of spirit. Maotai or Moutai is the brand of baijiu made in the town of Maotai. Historically different distilleries produced it but they were merged into Kweichow Moutai after the Communist takeover. They apparently do prefer the "Moutai" spelling in English, but Maotai is also common (apparently more so). To make things more confusing, Kweichow Moutai now makes other products that aren't Maotai/Moutai, including beer.--Cúchullain ^t/c 16:59, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Comment Thanks to @LlywelynII:, @AjaxSmack:, and @Cuchullain:'s patience and contributions from the others, we may be moving toward a consensus. Looking at the baijiu, Kaoliang, and Chinese alcoholic beverages I see overlap and confusion. The ideal solution would be to move the sections of this Maotai article that deal with the present company, brand, and product to "Moutai," then distribute the material that deals with varieties of baijiu to that article, with suitable links and "Main Article" references. There are ample reliable sources online to expand and properly reference the related subject articles. I now have too much on my plate to undertake the project, but I would say a prayer for or lift a glass to (your choice) anyone who does. In the meantime, rather than move the whole article to "Moutai," I still would slightly incline to leaving this article where it is and rewriting the lead to reflect the body of the article. ch (talk) 05:00, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, CWH. I missed this, but there's an article on the company itself at Kweichow Moutai Company, although Kweichow Moutai redirects here. It may be worth moving all the company info there (with a summary here). And we should definitely move out the info on other types of baijiu.--Cúchullain ^t/c 12:47, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

@LlywelynII:

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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What's a "ton" of something sold by volume?

So WTF are these "tons" used for something that is sold by volume, in milliliters even in the USA (no mention of quarts or gallons or fluid ounces, even here), as in the rest of the world? Megagrams? 2000 lb--or for those that think hundred is written in digits as "112", twenty of those long hundredweight?

Does that weight include the bottles? The boxes and the pallets they are shipped on? Gene Nygaard (talk) 20:09, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

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