Chinese liquor brewing has a long history, and is as famous as foreign brandy, vodka, whiskey, rum and gin, and is known as the "six world distilled famous liquors".
The history of Chinese liquor can be traced back to ancient times. Among them, the record of King Zhou "using wine as a pool, hanging meat as a forest, for long night drinking" in "Records of the Grand Historian: The Book of Yin", and the verses "harvesting rice in October, for this spring wine" and "for this pure wine, to celebrate the longevity" in "The Book of Songs" all show that the rise of Chinese liquor has a history of 5,000 years.
However, there are many different opinions about the origin of winemaking. According to the historical records, there are five kinds of opinions:
- The theory that God made wine:
In Dou Ping's "Wine Book", there is "There is a wine star in the sky, and the wine is made, and it is the same as the heaven and the earth." This theory believes that the heaven and earth are of the same age as wine, and the wine star in the sky is specifically for making wine. Of course, no one believes that wine was created by heaven, but the history of brewing is too long. The theory that the wine star made wine shows that our ancestors had a rich imagination. At the same time, this theory also proves that wine occupied an important position in daily life and social activities at that time.
- The theory that monkeys made wine:
In ancient mountains and forests, fruits were abundant in the wild, and monkeys lived by eating wild fruits. In summer and autumn, when the fruits were abundant, they would throw the remaining stories and peels into the cracks of the rocks in the caves. When the peels of these fruits rotted, the wild yeast on the peels made the sugar in the fruits ferment naturally and turned into wine pulp, which is naturally formed fruit wine. People call this wine "monkey wine".
The ancient legend of monkeys making wine is based on this natural fruit wine, but the wine made by monkeys can only be said to be "made" natural wild fruit wine with wine flavor at best, which is far different from the wine brewed by people, and there is a qualitative difference. Although the monkeys did not pick fruits for winemaking, the magical power of nature inadvertently created this surprise.
Huangdi made wine:
Ge Hong of the Eastern Jin Dynasty said in Baopuzi that the emperor had invented the "Jiuquan method" to make wine. The Huangdi Neijing Suwen, which was written in the Han Dynasty, recorded the scene of Huangdi and Qi Bo discussing winemaking. The Huangdi Neijing also mentioned an ancient wine - Li Lao, which is a sweet wine made from animal milk.Yi Di made wine:
It is said that Yi Di in the Xia Yu period invented winemaking. There are many records in historical books that Yi Di "made good wine" and "began to make wine mash", which seems to be the ancestor of winemaking. The historical book "Lüshi Chunqiu" in the second century BC said: Yi Di made wine. The "Strategies of the Warring States" edited by Liu Xiang in the Han Dynasty further explains: In the past, the emperor's daughter asked Yi Di to make delicious wine, and presented it to Yu. Yu drank it and found it sweet, saying: "In the future, there will be people who drink wine and enter the country." So he alienated Yi Di and stopped drinking delicious wine (Yu was the emperor of the Xia Dynasty).The theory that Du Kang made wine:
Emperor Cao Cao of Wei Dynasty chanted in "Short Song": "How to relieve worries, only Du Kang", since then, there are more people who think that wine was made by Du Kang.
Legend has it that when Du Kang was a child, he was herding sheep and had lunch in Jiuquangou at noon, where mulberry trees grew and there were clear springs. Du Kang often remembered his ancestors here, and the food was hard to swallow, so he poured the food into the mulberry cave beside him. Over time, the leftovers accumulated very thickly. Du Kang lost his appetite and became thinner. His neighbor gave him some koji powder, which he accidentally threw into a tree hole. The rice in the tree hole was fermented into wine by the koji powder. Du Kang drank some wine and found that it could relieve his worries and cheer him up. He carefully summarized the principles of "rice accumulation in an empty mulberry tree" and "fermentation with koji" and began to make wine.
There are many interesting legends about wine making, and each one has its own story. These legends can roughly show that wine making in my country existed as early as the Xia Dynasty or before the Xia Dynasty.