When did China's wine actually originate? This is not very convincing evidence. In recent years, some authors believe that China had wine in the Shang Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago. According to relevant data, a sealed bronze tomb was found in an ancient tomb excavated in Henan Province 1980. According to the analysis of the Department of Chemistry of Peking University, Tongce's wine is wine ("wine preserved for three thousand years", brewing, 1987. 5)。 It is not clear whether the grapes used for brewing at that time were cultivated artificially or wild. Other archaeological data show that there are still fruits and stones of peaches, plums, jujubes and other fruits in a clay pot in the ruins of a brewing workshop in the middle of Shang Dynasty (Tang Yunming et al., Archaeological Discovery of Hebei Brewing Data and the Origin of China Brewing, The Shape of Water, the Character of Fire —— Collection of Studies on Chinese Wine Culture, Guangdong People's Publishing House, 1987. 1 1)。 Although there is not enough written evidence, from the above archaeological data, we can really believe that in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, in addition to the wine brewed from grain raw materials, other fruits also occupied a place.
I. Historical materials of ancient wines
Generally speaking, in ancient China, wine was not the main wine, but in some areas, such as where Xinjiang is now located, wine was basically the main wine. For relevant information, please refer to the Introduction of Grapes and Wine into China (see Zhang Yuzhong's paper "The Shape of Water, the Character of Fire-A Collection of Studies on Chinese Wine Culture", Guangdong People's Publishing House, 1987). In some historical periods, such as the Yuan Dynasty, wine was also widely used. There are still rich records about wine in the literature of past dynasties.
Sima Qian recorded wine for the first time in his famous Historical Records. In BC 138, Zhang Qian, a diplomat, was sent to the Western Regions on the orders of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. He saw that "grapes make wine around ten thousand, and rich people keep wine above mangoku, and those who stay for a long time are unbeaten at the age of several decades. Ordinary people are addicted to alcohol, while horses are addicted to alfalfa. Han made the letter true, so the emperor began to plant alfalfa and the grapes were fertile. And Tianma, a foreign envoy, left the palace to see all kinds of peach blossoms and alfalfa eager "("Historical Records, Biography of Dawan ",article 63). Dawan is a country in the ancient western regions, located in the Fergana Valley in Central Asia. The historical data of this case fully shows that during the Western Han Dynasty, China had learned and mastered the techniques of grape cultivation and wine-making from neighboring countries. The Western Regions have been the main wine producing areas in China since ancient times. There are many historical materials in the unearthed documents in Turpan (compiled from modern unearthed documents) that record the cultivation, management, concession and liquor trade of Turpan vineyards in the 4th-8th century A.D. From this historical material, we can see that the scale of wine production in that historical period was relatively large.
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, wine was still very precious. "Taiping Yu Lan" Volume 972 "Continued Han Shu" said: Fufeng Mengtuo left a barrel, that is, thought Liangzhou was a historical thorn. Enough to prove the rarity of wine at that time.
The brewing technology of wine is simpler than that of yellow rice wine, but because the production of grape raw materials is seasonal, it is not as convenient as grain raw materials after all, so the brewing technology of wine has not been widely promoted. Historically, wine in mainland China has been kept constant. During the Tang and Yuan Dynasties, wine brewing methods from other places were introduced into the mainland. In the Yuan Dynasty, it was the largest. Its production is mainly concentrated in Xinjiang. In the Yuan Dynasty, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province also had a history of large-scale grape cultivation and wine making. However, the production technology of Han wine is basically irrelevant.
Although the production technology of grapes and wine was introduced in Han dynasty, it did not spread. After the Han Dynasty, grapes were probably no longer planted in the Central Plains. In some remote areas, the royal families of past dynasties often paid tribute to wine in the form of tribute wine. During the Tang Dynasty, the Central Plains knew nothing about wine. Emperor Taizong introduced grapes from the western regions. Volume III of the New Book of the South records: "Emperor Taizong broke Gaochang, harvested mare's milk grapes and planted them in the garden, and got the wine method. That wine is still profitable, green and refreshing, delicious, Chang 'an began to know its taste. Volume 970 of the Song Book "Yuan Gui of Ci Fu" records that the former site of Gaochang was about 20 kilometers east of Turpan, Xinjiang, and its ownership was uncertain at that time. In the Tang dynasty, wine had a great influence in the mainland. The grape cultivation methods and wine-making methods learned from Gaochang may have lasted for a long historical period in the Tang Dynasty, so that the name of wine appeared frequently in many poems in the Tang Dynasty. For example, the well-known poem: "A glowing glass of grape wine, if you want to drink pipa, you must hurry it immediately" (William Wang's Liangzhou Ci). Liu Yuxi (772-842) also wrote a poem praising wine, saying, "I'm from Jin, so I can't get enough of this kind of jade every day. "This shows that at that time, Shanxi had planted grapes and brewed wine. Both Bai Juyi and Li Bai have poems about wine. At that time, the conference semifinals also opened a hotel in Chang 'an, selling wine from the western regions.
The rulers of the Yuan Dynasty loved wine very much, and it was stipulated that wine must be used for offering sacrifices to ancestral temples. And opened vineyards in Taiyuan, Shanxi and Nanjing, Jiangsu. In the 28th year of Zhiyuan, a wine room was built in the palace.
Due to the development of distillation technology, the Yuan Dynasty began to produce brandy, which was recorded in eating and eating. In the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen also recorded the grape shochu in the western regions in the Compendium of Materia Medica.
According to the records in Volume 30 of Xu Guangqi's "Agricultural Administration Encyclopedia" in the Ming Dynasty, the grape varieties cultivated in China are: crystal grapes, which are dizzy in white, pink in appearance and sweet in taste. Purple grapes, black, have two sizes of sweet and sour. Green grapes, out of Shu, are green when ripe. If it is a green grape from Xifan, it is famous for its rabbit eyes, and its taste is better than its sweetness. If it is seedless, it will be different.
Small grapes grow as small as pepper in the west ... Yunnan grapes are as big as dates and have a long taste.
Second, China ancient winemaking methods.
China ancient wine-making techniques mainly include natural fermentation and koji-adding. The latter is suspected of gilding the lily, which shows the deep-rooted influence of China's distiller's yeast method.
1 natural fermentation method:
Wine can be naturally fermented into wine without koji. The wine brewing method learned from the Western Regions should be natural fermentation. Su Jing's newly revised Materia Medica in the Tang Dynasty said: "Brewing requires music, while Pu Tao, honey and other wines don't have to be solo." There are yeasts on the surface of grape skin, which can ferment grapes into wine.
A poet in Yuan Dynasty once wrote a poem, which recorded the natural fermentation method at that time: Qiu Cui Tianqiao couldn't fly, and the pearls under his chin took off the cold dew. In spring, there are thousands of bases day and night, and the columns are full of autumn and spring. After a few clouds, the moon is clear and light, and the fragrant marrow is steaming warm. The wine turned into a fragrant pot, and the spring breeze froze the glass lamp. Manna deceives milk, and qu sheng tastes hard to understand. The canon does not fight Liangzhou.
2, koji-making fermentation method:
Because our people have been using distiller's yeast to make wine for a long time, in the traditional concept of China people, distiller's yeast must be added when making wine. Coupled with the obstacles in technical communication, some areas still don't understand the principle of grape natural fermentation. Therefore, in the historical records of some brewing techniques, we can see some redundant and hilarious practices. For example, the wine method included in the famous monograph "Nine Classics of Beishan" in the Northern Song Dynasty is deeply branded with the brand of yellow wine brewing method. The method is as follows: "Put the sour rice into a steamer, steam it, and have five ounces of almonds (peeled and pointed)." Pu Tao weighs two and a half Jin (washed, dried, peeled and seeded), and almonds are also placed in the same place in the sand basin. Three buckets of cooked pulp are ground one by one, and raw silk is filtered. Three-and-a-half cooked pulp spilled out, and the rice was soft and covered for a long time. Then spread the rice on the table, heat it according to the usual method, and find it to mix in the koji. In this method, grapes are washed, peeled and seeded, and yeast is removed. Grapes are only used as an ingredient. So it can't be called real wine. Even in some areas of the Yuan Dynasty, the combination of grapes and rice was still used. For example, Yuan Haowen, a poet in the Yuan Dynasty, wrote in the preface to Pu Tao Jiu Fu: "Liu Dengzhou is just Popo:' I have many Pu Tao in Anyi, but people don't know how to make wine. If I try it with my old friend Xu Zhongxiang in a few days, I will actually drink it with rice. Although wine is made, the ancients said that it is sweet but not bitter, and those who are cold but not cold lose it. "
Third, the wine in modern China
In late Qing Dynasty 1892, Zhang Bishi, an overseas Chinese, established a vineyard and wine company-Changyu Grape Brewing Company in Yantai, and introduced excellent grape varieties and mechanized production methods from the west. Since then, China's wine production technology has reached a new level.
After the founding of New China, from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, China introduced wine grape varieties from Bulgaria, Hungary and the former Soviet Union. China has also carried out the breeding of grape varieties. At present, China has established vineyards and wine production bases in arid areas of Xinjiang and Gansu, in coastal plain of Bohai Sea, old course of Yellow River, arid areas of Loess Plateau, Huaihe River Basin and Changbai Mountain in Northeast China. The newly-built winery has also made great progress in these aspects.