![]() ![]() The décor is made up of old huangjiu jars and every month, they host a kaitan or “jar opening” where they crack into a giant jug of vintage huangjiu and give patrons a sip on the house. This Shaoxing restaurant near Confucius Temple specializes in its home city’s huangjiu. Check out some of our favorite places to drink huangjiu and eat dishes made with it. Plus Shanghainese food shares many characteristics with Zhe cuisine. When huangjiu is young, the flavor is strong and sweet, so most bottles designed for drinking are aged for at least a year before heading to market – the longer it ages, the better.ĭishes that contain Shaoxing huangjiu are easy to find in the Shanghai region, thanks to its proximity to the city (it’s less than an hour and a half away by bullet train). Huadiao is another famous type of huangjiu from Shaoxing, named not for the medium-sweet wine inside, but for the elaborate patterns carved into the jars in which it is aged. Semi-sweet shanniang uses already-fermented yuanhong in place of water to start its brewing process. Jiafan translates as “add rice,” and that’s exactly what happens when brewers add more glutinous grains in the secondary fermentation to encourage more sugar in this slightly sweeter version. With only 15 grams of sugar or less per liter, yuanhong is the basic block upon which all the other varieties of huangjiu are built. Traditionally in Shaoxing, new parents will buy a jar of this huangjiu and bury it when their child is born, to be dug up to celebrate achievements in the child’s life, like getting married or graduating from school. ![]() Yuanhong – or “Champion’s Red” – is named for the earthenware jars that the wine is aged in. The drink tops out at around 20 percent alcohol, since it is fermented, not distilled, and the most common varieties are yuanhong, jiafan and shanniang, ordered from least amount of sugar to most. Selecting huangjiu means picking your desired level of sweetness. The Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) benefits of the drink are legion, and include “invigorating the blood.” TCM practitioners recommend pairing Shaoxing huangjiu, considered a “warming” drink, with “cooling” foods like hairy crab or cold chicken to keep your qi in balance. The most famous variety hails from Shaoxing in Zhejiang province, originally due to the pure water of Mirror Lake that was used to make the huangjiu. The product of all that fermentation is a sherry-like amber liquid that is used in Chinese cooking or served as a drink paired with Chinese foods. The wine is made from fermenting glutinous rice with wheat or rice qu, a cake of mashed grains that cultivate yeast both convert the starch to sugar then to alcohol. Annual production starts in eastern China’s Shaoxing region in the tenth lunar month – the temperature and humidity at that time of year create the best environment for making the wine – with sacrifices to Du Kang. Legend has it that huangjiu, or yellow wine, was invented by Du Kang, the god of Chinese alcohol. ![]()
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