How China made wine in ancient times

The steaming of grain is the first procedure in Chinese winemaking. The grain is mixed with wine quartz, and after steaming, it is more favorable for fermentation. In the traditional process, the half-cooked grain is spread on the ground after it has been taken out of the pot, and this is the second procedure of winemaking, which is the process of mixing, batching, piling up, and pre-fermentation. The ground on which the grain is dried has a special name, called drying hall. Three drying halls were excavated at the Shuijingfang site, overlapping each other in turn. The mounds next to the drying halls are the ruins of wine cellars, which are like huge wine tanks sunk into the ground. Shui Jing Fang excavated 8 wine cellars, the inner wall and the bottom are coated with pure yellow clay, the thickness of the cellar mud ranges from 8 centimeters to 25 centimeters.

What goes on in the wine cellars is the third process of winemaking, the post-fermentation of the raw materials.

After the cellar fermentation and aging of the mother liquor, the alcohol concentration is still very low, and it needs to be further distilled and condensed in order to obtain a higher alcohol concentration of liquor, and the traditional process is accomplished by using a still commonly known as a tianpian (heavenly pot).

People found a strange round-shaped remains in the Qing Dynasty level, at first glance, a bit like a well. Archaeologists have finally concluded that this is the earliest identifiable physical object for producing distilled spirits in China. In those days, a huge heavenly cauldron was set up on a pedestal, which was divided into two layers, the lower one containing mother liquor and the upper one containing cold water. With a wood fire raging on the pedestal, the mother liquor was steamed, and the gases containing alcohol were cooled by the cold water on top of it, condensed into liquid, and flowed out of the pipe, which was distilled liquor.

People infer from this that in the Qing Dynasty, what was produced here was distilled spirits, and the technology has been very close to modern brewing technology. Experts tested the microorganisms in several old cellars of Shui Jing Fang and isolated red currant and root mold. The archaeology of Shui Jing Fang confirms that China already had a very mature distilled spirits brewing technology at the latest in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties.

China's distilled spirits are classified as strong-flavored, clear-flavored and saucy, etc. The spirits brewed by ShuiJingFang belong to the strong-flavored liquor, which is the most widely distributed type of China's distilled spirits, and its biggest feature in brewing technology is that it is brewed in mud cellars, which makes it a special category in China's brewing process. Its birthplace is the Chengdu Plain and the Sichuan Basin, the only place that can produce very good strong-flavored spirits.

Because of the limited area of the current excavation, there is no deep excavation below the third layer, so it is very likely that there are artifacts and sites of earlier eras buried underneath the site, and the truth of the abandonment and enabling of the different historical dimensions may give us a more reasonable explanation in the further excavation in the future.