Han Tang Art Garden/Wen
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Before reading this article, please read the following articles first
Drunken Beauty Master | Wu Xiaoping and her legendary life (1) Duckweed drift is rootless
Drunken Beauty Master | Wu Xiaoping and her legendary life (2) My family has a female first growing up
Drunken Beauty Master | Wu Xiaoping and her legendary life (3) I will never give up lightly
Editor's Note
From March 5th to March 8th, the first training course for old wine appraisers of the Collection and Market Professional Committee of China Liquor Circulation Association was held in Zengpintang China Old Wine Museum in Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province. Wu Xiaoping was invited to share the stage with Chinese liquor giants Ji Keliang and Gao Jingyan to teach and reveal the skills of strong aromatic liquor.
Who is Wu Xiaoping?
For many people in the old wine circle, the name Wu Xiaoping may still be a little unfamiliar, but in the liquor industry, Wu Xiaoping is a master figure.
She is the first batch of female bartenders, the first batch of female wine appraisers, the first chief appraiser of Chinese liquor, the national liquor judge, the national liquor appraisal master, and the first generation of liquor design masters. Representative works include the first generation of the National Cellar 1573, the drunkard internal reference, and the Wenjun Tianxian.
Today, we publish the fourth article of the series "Wu Xiaoping and Her Legendary Life", which continues to reveal the growth path of a generation of liquor masters.
lose in hake, but gain in herring. —— To the good people in life
The plum blossom fragrance comes from the bitter cold
Wu Xiaoping entered the Luzhou Old Cellar Distillery, first assigned to the laboratory, and then assigned to the toasting workshop. At that time, the Cultural Revolution had not yet ended, and when one faction came to power, the other faction was almost in a controlled position and was concentrated to run "study classes."
Because Wu Xiaoping belonged to the "Red Five Category", she was sent to look after the people of the opposing faction. But out of compassion, helping others, especially those in difficulty, is the usual mentality of the Wu family generations. So for those who were guarded by hostile people, she instead brought boiling water for them, and twice a day she had to bring boiling water from the canteen for them, and the family brought food and passed them food. This matter was discovered by the above, thinking that she was not firm, so he replaced her and still returned to the workshop.
The work in the workshop is mainly manual labor, which is hard to come by, and all kinds of new spirits are conveyed and implemented at that time, one of the spirits is that the times are different, men and women are the same, and what male comrades can do, female comrades can also do.
At that time, the oil department had a 3211 drilling team, and this female worker team became a model for the whole country, and all walks of life were answering the call to learn from them. At that time, the learning trend was very strong, and Luzhou Laojiao was no exception, and there must be such a representative in its own enterprises.
Luzhou Old Cellar is a wine-making factory, since ancient times, winemaking is a man's business, is a kind of heavy physical labor that only men can do. But the above call must be implemented, so in the old cellar factory also set up a women's brewing team, needless to say, Wu Xiaoping actively signed up and became one of them.
Before wu Xiaoping signed up, she first met with her adoptive father Wu Haiqing. Wu Haiqing was moved in his heart at that time, even a thousand surprises, he felt that this was providence, his daughter Wu Xiaoping could go to the brewing workshop to make wine, then he Wu Haiqing would not feel guilty in the face of his ancestors, and the Wu family's "righteous focus on making wine" career and wine path could be passed on. He immediately expressed his support, and especially emphasized that this was Providence, so that the wine channel of WuJiajiu could have the opportunity to be extended downwards.
The labor during that time was arduous, but Wu Xiaoping was energetic to do it, she didn't need anyone to cheer her up, her heart was telling her, you chose it, you have to be dedicated, do your best to do it. She suddenly felt that the ancestors of the Wu family were all looking at her expectantly, so she would not be afraid of suffering.
Wu Xiaoping recounted it like this: Although it is a women's brewing team, the labor intensity is too great, and it is impossible to rely on women to do it. Let's say that the cloud plate, for steaming wine, requires two men to carry it, and the two women must not be able to lift it, and the old workers who make wine will lift it off the koshiki and put it on the shelf next to it, these are things that we women can't do at all, and we can't do it physically.
At that time, mechanization was very low, or there was no mechanization at all, so it was impossible to arrange for our women's team to go to the toast, and the leader arranged for three men to join us in a class. When we toast we go to pick wine, when we are flowing wine you have to watch the wine is picked, and then when we get up the cellar we go to the koshiki, to sprinkle the dregs, to do distillation. The koji is too high for us to sprinkle on, and it is scattered everywhere, and at this time the teacher will come to help. We were going to throw the brewer, but the brewer was too heavy to shake, so we went to push the chicken bus, which was a trolley with only one wheel. Anyway, every kind of work has to be done, it is really tiring and hard. But you always have to do it, and you have to do it well.
"The bad work is also very heavy, and the mother in the old cellar will be piled up into a very bad pile after it comes out." The teachers always help us, and when it is bad on the top, it is up to us to pick and choose. If it is a bad underneath, we don't have the physical strength, more than two meters deep in the cellar, to throw the bad up below, we don't have the strength to throw the bad up, so the teachers and masters go down to the bottom of the cellar to get the bad, throw the bad up, and replace it with us women to pick up the mess. ”
What really makes Wu Xiaoping feel the hardest is that she has to get up at two o'clock in the morning, especially in winter, luzhou's winter is particularly cold, and northerners who are now working in Luzhou say that luzhou's winter is colder than the north.
Young is the age of snooze, sleep has not woken up has been very uncomfortable, the day is cold, Wu Xiaoping's family is not good, to work in the workshop, or wear a torn cotton jacket, she will be cold and shivering. And at that time, only coal could be burned, and the temperature in the workshop was particularly low, in her words:
"You have to put up with all this, because all the work you have to do, it's not disposable, you have to do it every day, this is your job, it's up to you, you have to do it well. My adoptive father said to me, since you want to make wine, the first thing you have to do is not to be afraid of being tired, and the second is to persist and focus on making wine, and don't think about anything else. ”
The sword blade comes out of the grinding, the plum blossom fragrance comes from the bitter cold, and there is never a shortcut to success.
There is a powerful one called simplicity
The women's brewing team had a tough time, as she described it this way:
"What impressed me the most was pushing the chicken bus, there were two hundred kilograms of things on the car alone, pushing to the edge of the cellar to pour the things on the car into the cellar pool, the body of the car was thrown forward, I just didn't have the strength to pull the car back, even the car fell down the cellar pool, I immediately ran to the brewing machine, told the teacher, the car fell." The teachers are really good, they will not be unhappy, but they will not tire of going down to the cellar to pull the car up. ”
Recalling that experience, it is false to say that it was not hard. In the spring and summer, the rotitorant workshop is stuffy and hot, and as a young girl, the first thing you have to get used to is working with men who are naked and wear only a pair of shorts because it's too hot. As for the intensity of labor, from the current point of view, it is rare and unbearable. At that time, a group of four people, three men and one woman, in the absence of machinery, their labor was equivalent to the workload of five male workers plus a semi-mechanized driving car. But the warmth between comrades always touched Wu Xiaoping.
This experience was of great benefit to Wu Xiaoping's later success. It not only refined Wu Xiaoping's tenacity in the face of difficulties, but also enabled her to integrate the family's inheritance of winemaking from body to heart.
More than two years of work in the rotisserie workshop made her familiar with and mastered all the winemaking techniques that an experienced winemaker must master. Especially in the process of toasting, in the process of distillation, she has to smell, taste, compare, and analyze the wine at each time, which makes her have a deeper understanding of the quality of wine, and cultivates her curiosity and exploration psychology about the quality of wine, which has planted a deep emotion for her future career positioning.
From then on, the wine began to penetrate deeply into her heart and became the main ingredient in her life. Only then did she truly appreciate the spiritual realm of "focusing on making wine with a straight heart".
After the wind blows through the women's brewing team, the brewing workshop still returns to the world of men. Soon, Wu Xiaoping was transferred to the office.
Born ordinary and not ordinary
From today's point of view, working in the office is a bit like a civil servant compared to working in a liquor workshop. Wu Xiaoping no longer needed to throw away the mess, lift the cloud disk, and push the chicken bus, these dirty and heavy jobs had left her. Now she's in the office, uploading and ordering, making a phone call, sorting out the documents, sitting and drinking tea, reading the newspaper, it's very relaxed. What is even more desirable is that she has the opportunity to contact the upper echelons here, which is of great benefit to a person's future, because a person's future is often in the hands of the superiors.
All this seemed to be fine, but it wasn't long before she missed the workshop inexplicably. There is no smell of bad wine, no excitement and joy after a good wine has been baked, no sense of mastery in judging the extent of picking wine by looking at the hops, and no satisfaction that can dominate one's own strength. The contrast between the silky smooth touch of the toast and the coarse softness of the bulk wine will satisfy her.
So she began to feel bored, felt that there was nothing to do, and even felt that there was no way out for her in this kind of place. She told her adoptive father about this idea, and her adoptive father Wu Haiqing felt the same way, but he encouraged his daughter to say: It is good to have a heart that insists on brewing, wait, I believe there will be a chance.
It is often said that opportunities are always given to those who are prepared, which is exactly what happened to Wu Xiaoping. Her preparations were the grind of her life from birth to her youth: living with her father in the barbeque workshop from an early age, and later working in the toast shop, which made her heart deeply integrated into the wine, creating her love and even attachment to winemaking, and the sense of family mission instilled in her adoptive father from an early age. The main thing is her personality, she does not like to be bland, does not love a pool of backwater, in her life, she is always looking forward to new things, looking forward to a different life.
Thus, a decisive opportunity for Wu Xiaoping's life came.
At that time, it was the era of planned economy, and the old cellar in Luzhou belonged to Yibin Pipe. Therefore, the people of Yibin Tobacco and Liquor Company would often come to the factory to inspect the work, because the system at that time was that the liquor produced by the distillery was only supplied to the tobacco and liquor company.
One of Wu Xiaoping's jobs in the office is to be responsible for reception, so when people from Yibin Tobacco and Liquor Company come to Luzhou Laojiao Distillery, Wu Xiaoping will always accompany them and prepare sample wine for them to be tasted by these leaders.
Once, Ye Xianzuo of the Yibin Regional Liquor Administration bureau came to Luzhou Old Cellar to inspect the work. Ye Xianzuo was the first national judge of Baijiu in China at that time. The reception work was in charge of Wu Xiaoping, and during the conversation, Ye Xianzuo knew that Wu Xiaoping had worked in the toasting workshop for more than two years, and when he was interested, he pointed to several samples of wine that were about to be tasted in front of him and said to Wu Xiaoping:
"Come and taste the wine and see how many songs you can play for it."
The so-called several songs are special songs, head songs, two songs and the like. Wu Xiaoping has lived and played in the roasting workshop of the old cellar in Luzhou since she was a child, and later the women's brewing team in the old cellar workshop has personally experienced the toast, and she is too familiar with the wine.
She has toasted wine, when picking wine she has to smell, to the beginning and the end, every different time period of taste, aroma she is very clear, and the cellar in the two-wheel bottom, the bottom of the trough wine, and the lower wine, the quality of these wines, she is also clear when she is toasting, picking wine, there is a deep impression in her mind. What wine is a special song, what wine should be regarded as a second song, have a deep understanding of the foundation, so ask her to taste the commentary, she is not informal, naturally taste the evaluation.
After tasting the wine, she said exactly what their characteristics were, which were special songs and which were two songs, and commented very accurately. This surprised Ye Xianzuo, thinking that she was a person with great potential for judging, so he asked her if she wanted to do this job. Wu Xiaoping said without hesitation, I am willing to do it! This answer made Ye Xianzuo very happy, and told her that the evaluation of liquor has not been done by female comrades, and it should be very interesting for you to be able to do it.
Very interesting things for Wu Xiaoping, she is very eager to do. As for the hardship, she has always been bitter, and she is not afraid.
Challenges make life fun, overcoming challenges makes life meaningful. (To be continued)
In the next issue, please continue to read the "Drunken Beauty Master | Wu Xiaoping and Her Legendary Life (5) I Am the Light
For more cultural knowledge and collecting stories of fine wine, stay tuned to "Drunken Days of Collecting" to talk to me about those who collect wine