Hebei Youth Daily News For Baoding people, "eating" is the highlight of the Spring Festival, a year of joy, a year of missing, a year of receiving goods, all integrated in the elaborate gourmet cuisine. During the Spring Festival, Hebei Youth Daily specially launched the "Baoding New Year's Taste on the Tip of the Tongue" column to take you to enjoy the Baoding New Year's taste and feel the unique taste memory of Baoding people.
"The bells and drums are not expensive enough, but I hope that I will not wake up after a long time of drunkenness." In China, wine culture is often closely linked to poetry and song. There is also such a strong fragrance in Baoding, which has been around for thousands of years.
The wine rhymes with the years
"Old wine must be high-quality liquor", which seems to be a convention of drinkers. Although liquor is a fast-moving consumer product, it can precipitate time, and old wine has an unparalleled taste and value. Liu Ling's drunkenness is in the long history, creating an altar mellow fragrance.
Liu Ling's drunkenness is named after Liu Ling, one of the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest", which has a history of more than 1700 years. Legend has it that Liu Ling was an alcoholic, and when he visited Xushui's friend Zhang Hua, after tasting local wines, he could not extricate himself from it, and later the good story of "Zhang Hua made wine Liu Ling drunk" was even more well-known. In today's liquor market, Liu Ling's drunkenness is also known for its old wine collection.
Li Zhongsheng, a non-hereditary heir of Liu Ling's drunkenness, said that Liu Ling's drunken brewing technique was formed in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and has been passed down for 43 generations and has a history of nearly a thousand years. Due to the long history of continuous brewing, under the experience summary and inheritance and development of several generations of winemakers, a complete set of multi-grain brewing old five koshi process with unique characteristics such as "continuous bad ingredients into the cellar, solid low-temperature long-term fermentation, barrel slow fire mixing, segmented quantity and quality wine picking, graded long-term storage, and careful blending" has finally been formed. Its core skills have been passed down from generation to generation in the location of Liu Ling's drunken ancient pot and are still used today. In May 2021, Liu Ling's brewing technique was listed by the State Council as the fifth batch of national intangible cultural heritage.
As the winemaking workshop with the longest application time, Liu Ling drunken pot is known as "the world's first ancient pot"; and Liu Ling's drunken factory area has a large number of wooden and jingjiu wine seas, storing a variety of precious seasoned wines, known as "the first collection of wine seas"; covering an area of more than 180 acres of Wantan wine forest, storing more than 20,000 wine altars, is recognized as the world's largest garden-style wine collection base.
Ancient methods and ingenuity are created
As a representative of the fragrant liquor brand in northern China, In addition to a long period of precipitation, Liu Lingzui can also have a special climatic environment and the blessing of the traditional craft of ancient winemaking.
Liu Ling's drunkenness is brewed as pure grain, mainly using sorghum, wheat, rice, millet, glutinous rice and other raw materials. The taste characteristics of wine produced by different raw materials are also different, and various flavors make up for each other, which can make the wine taste more plump and coordinated. Wheat, barley, and pea are also used to make medium and high temperature koji as a saccharification starter. Koji-making should be concentrated in the rainfall, high air humidity, high temperature of the volt day, fermentation top temperature control at 57 °C -60 °C, is conducive to enriching the natural microbials. After the koji is mature, it must be aged for more than 3 months, and then the process of mixing and burning the old five koshiki is adopted, and the long-term fermentation of the old cellar of the mud pond, slow fire distillation, temperature-controlled distillation, quantitative and quality picking, multi-year storage of quality, and careful mixing can achieve strong fragrance.
Li Zhongsheng said: "After years of continuous use, the beneficial microbial flora in the mud is rich and extensive, forming a unique microbial environment, which is the driving force for fermentation in the process of Liu Ling's drunken brewing. The raw materials are fermented for 75 days by the old cellar of the mud pond, which prolongs the incense time during the fermentation process, makes the aroma of the wine more intense, and the quality is greatly improved. ”
"Raw incense depends on fermentation, Titian relies on distillation", and all kinds of fragrant substances produced during the fermentation process can be concentrated and extracted to the greatest extent through slow fire distillation. The temperature of distilled wine should be controlled at 26 ° C - 30 ° C, so that the irritating substances and miscellaneous substances with low boiling point can escape to ensure the purity of the wine and the safety of drinking. The new wines that have just been produced have defects such as irritation, lack of coordination, and lack of softness to varying degrees. Quantity and quality wine picking is to pick out different distillates and different quality characteristics of wine separately, and to age them separately through the underground wine sea, Wantan wine forest, etc. In the process of aging and storage, slow physical changes and chemical reactions are produced, so that the wine becomes aromatic, rich and plump, naturally coordinated, and the quality is further sublimated, this process is also called "old ripeness". Generally speaking, Liu Ling's drunken base wine should also be aged for more than 3 years, and special flavored wine should be aged for ten years, twenty years or even decades.
It can be said that it is this bland but extraordinary brewing moment that has created Liu Ling's unique northern school incense road. The understanding of the value of wine varies greatly among drinkers, but for brewers, the original intention interprets ingenuity, and the inheritance and innovation of skills are also mellow.
Q&A
Li Zhongsheng: Liu Ling is the inheritor of the provincial intangible cultural heritage of drunken brewing skills
Q: As a representative of the fragrant liquor brand in northern China, where are the unique advantages of Liu Lingdrun?
Li: Liu Ling's history is very long, and I have witnessed the ups and downs of the winery over the years. Liu Lingdrun has always insisted on pure grain brewing, and the ancient cellar pond retained not only contains the unique strains of strong aromatic liquor, but also bred two unique strains, which also enhances the difference between Liu Ling's drunkenness and other liquors. At the same time, Liu Ling drunk mainly uses two kinds of aging methods of wine sea and wine forest, and the effect of wine cultivation is very good. Wine sea is the oldest and most traditional way of storing wine in China, which can make the wine produce a special flavor during the storage process. Wine sea is mainly wooden, thorn weaving two forms, the interior to be coated with mulberry paper or beeswax and other mounting paste, cured to store wine, so that one is not leaking, but also can play a good effect of wine. Unique brewing techniques create unique quality, unique natural environment and unique microbial environment created by a long history, etc. to a certain extent, liu Ling's drunken fragrance.
Q: What is the development direction of Liu Lingdrun?
Li: Liu Lingdrun inherits the traditional brewing technology in the brewing process, and combines the development of the times to innovate and combine with modern science and technology. At the same time, we will continue to develop and launch new products according to market feedback and public tastes to meet market demand. Liu Ling's centuries-old heritage, at different time nodes, is the wisdom and hard work of the ancestors, step by step summary and innovation to make it develop so far. As a contemporary Liu Ling drunk, we should inherit this skill, and innovate it, seek new development, and make Liu Ling's drunken brewing skills carry forward!