Speaking of Zhenjiang's balsamic vinegar, it is well known. China people live, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea are called seven things to open the door. It can be seen that vinegar is an indispensable condiment for China people's home life.
Zhenjiang people get the moon first by being close to the water, and they produce vinegar at home. Nature has a soft spot for them. Every table in the hotel cannot be without vinegar; Every meal in people's homes is inseparable from vinegar. Balsamic vinegar has become a landscape in Zhenjiang people's life.
In Zhenjiang, to make fragrant vinegar, we must first choose local high-quality glutinous rice and local water, so that the taste can be pure. This kind of high-quality glutinous rice, the locals like to call it "Xiannuo". If you want to ask: Why is it called "Xiannuo", people will tell you that this Xiannuo has a legend related to "Eight Immortals".
It is said that the Eight Immortals visited Zhenjiang and saw Zhenjiang rice, which was thin and yellow and not delicious, so the Eight Immortals decided to leave a delicious rice for Zhenjiang people. But Tie Guai Li's good wine spoiled the soup and missed the time when eight people cooked rice together, so today's "Xiannuo" is missing a corner of Tie Guai Li.
"Xiannuo" is soaked in water for a certain period of time. It needs to be steamed in a big barrel. In fact, the story of Shannon is just a joke. However, the vinegar in Zhenjiang is really different from the famous vinegar in other parts of China. It is made of glutinous rice.
It is said that Zhenjiang's balsamic vinegar is fragrant and slightly sweet, sour but not astringent, and it will not rot. People in Zhenjiang will tell you that balsamic vinegar is not bad, and it is one of the three monsters in Zhenjiang. This is of course related to its production process. Steamed glutinous rice should be cooled in a vat first, and then mixed with distiller's grains evenly. A few days later, what you see is not vinegar, but a jar of sweet glutinous rice wine.
Perhaps Zhenjiang people care too much about the treasure of balsamic vinegar. You can hear more than one legend about it in Zhenjiang.
There is no vinegar in Zhenjiang, but how did vinegar settle in Zhenjiang? This leads to a story about wine. This wine is not an ordinary wine, but a famous Henan wine-Dukang wine.
According to legend, Du Kang's family originally lived in Henan. Home-brewed Dukang wine is a well-known wine.
When there was a war in the Central Plains, my father Du Kang moved his family to Zhenjiang. The family opened a small hotel outside the city and still made a living by selling wine.
Du Kang has a son named Heita who helps his father in the restaurant all day. One day, Heita finished her work, lifted the jar, drank several kilograms of wine in one breath, and wanted to rest by the jar for a while. I didn't expect rice wine to have a great stamina, so I fell asleep soon. Suddenly, there was thunder in my ear. I saw an old man with white hair standing in front of me in the fog of the Black Tower. I smiled and said to him, "Heita, the nectar you brewed has been 2 1 day, and you can taste it today." Then the old man disappeared. When Heita woke up, she told her father all this. Du Kang came to the jar, dipped his finger in it, put it in his mouth and tasted it. Sweet and sour. Du Kang thought it was amazing, but when he thought about it carefully, it was unitary, 21st and unitary. Isn't the combination of words vinegar? It turns out that the nectar that Xian Weng said is vinegar.
The aroma of Zhenjiang aromatic vinegar is closely related to its brewing technology. The brewing of fragrant vinegar can be divided into three stages: brewing, making vinegar granules and pouring vinegar. More than 40 processes, which lasted two months.
There is balsamic vinegar in Zhenjiang today, and there is a story about a father making wine and a son making vinegar.
Vinegar brewed in 2 1 century must be cooked at high temperature and stored in sealed vats. After half a year, balsamic vinegar can be eaten. And the longer it is preserved, the more mellow it tastes.
In the twenty years of Daoguang, that is, in Room 1840, there was a man named Zhu Zhaohuai in Zhenjiang who founded Zhu Hengshun's lousy workshop. It started with the production of wine. Later, Hengshun used distiller's grains as vinegar, and the workshop was renamed Zhu Hengshun's bad shower. 1966 was officially named as the state-owned Zhenjiang Hengshun sauce and vinegar factory. It is the predecessor of today's Hengshun Vinegar Industry Co., Ltd. Hengshun is a large-scale enterprise in China's domestic sauce and vinegar industry. Hengshun's products sell well all over the country and have been sold to more than 40 countries and regions in the world.
After all, the story of balsamic vinegar is just a story, but Zhenjiang people really have a soft spot for vinegar. They should eat noodles, soup packets, meat dishes, fish and crabs with vinegar. Some people say that this is related to many immigrants from the Central Plains in Zhenjiang. In those days, the 3,000 garment apprentices sent by Qin Shihuang stayed in Zhenjiang. For thousands of years, many large-scale immigrants caused by the war have left many northerners' living habits in Zhenjiang. In Zhenjiang, people's breakfast is mostly pasta. Needless to say, there are several kinds of soup buns, just noodles. People in Zhenjiang always say that it is uncomfortable not to eat noodles for a few days. It seems that in Zhenjiang, vinegar and glutinous rice are inseparable, and it is also inseparable from this habit of eating pasta.