There is a netizen who sells wine frequently posts on the Internet, saying the most sentence: Hundred grass song to be lost, ancient wine to be lost, and then it is difficult to drink hundred grass song wine. Is this really the case? Or is it alarmist to create a tense atmosphere?
How could the herb song and the ancient winemaking process be lost? In Chongqing, there is an intangible cultural heritage hundred grass making technique, which has been passed down to the fifth generation. Last month, another sixth generation was born, which can be described as a prosperous and long ancestral shadow. As an intangible cultural heritage in Chongqing, it seems unlikely that it will be lost, and wine lovers who love this bite can still drink Baicaoqu wine normally.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >how did this herb recipe come from? </h1>
In 2018, the Chongqing Intangible Cultural Heritage Working Group collected and certified all the relevant testimonial evidence of his family's Baicao Qu in the process of investigating and implementing the Lujia family in Apengjiang Town, Qianjiang District, and was subsequently included in the list of intangible cultural heritage of Chongqing Municipality, for details of the document (Appendix 1).
As an intangible cultural heritage, it has been confirmed by the ancestral clues investigated that this intangible cultural heritage project originated in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. The first generation of Lu's traditional Chinese medicine wine making skills was named Hu Hanwei, and he was the grandfather of his grandfather, the fifth generation of lu Wang.
Mr. Hu Hanwei himself was a local Langzhong, that is, a traditional Chinese medicine, and Western medicine had not yet come to him at that time. Mr. Hu was given a chance to meet a YouFang Langzhong from Jiangxi who taught him the secret recipe for making wine songs in Traditional Chinese medicine. Mr. Hu's location in the Qianjiang region, there was originally a folk winemaking custom, so the traditional Chinese medicine formula began to be applied to the production of koji wine, and the taste was much better than the local local wine. The old man was later passed on to his daughter as the second generation of heirs. The third generation of heirs Lu Rongzao (Lu Wang's grandfather), Lu Ronghai, Lu Rong wednesday brothers, is the grandson of the first generation of Mr. Hu, the son of the second generation. The fourth generation of inheritors, Lu Mingming, has now reached the fifth generation of Lu Wang, and is the younger son of Lu Ming.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > what kind of wine song is a hundred grass songs</h1>
At present, the brewing koji, regardless of the solid state method or the liquid method, the koji used is nothing more than the big koji and the small koji medicinal koji, and then the saccharification enzyme koji. Medicine song belongs to the small song, which is the earliest inheritance of wine song, dating back to ancient times. There is physical evidence that more than 8,000 years ago, a complete winemaking workshop was excavated from the JiaHu site in Henan. According to archaeologists, the winemaking technique was very mature at that time, but there was no wine song. How can it be fermented without koji? The ancients had a way for women to chew grains and fruits, mixed with saliva and spit into containers to ferment. There is still this ancient method of brewing in Japan and Taiwan.
Koji with chinese medicinal ingredients has also existed since ancient times, and after having koji, it is precise that the earliest koji was made of broken grains and herbs. Therefore, the ancients called the wine koji "koji tiller", koji is a broken grain, and tillers are herbs. It is just that the number of types of "grass" is very different, generally several kinds of grass, dozens of species, hundreds of species of very few. We have drunk Dongjiu is brewed by Baicaoqu, and the folk Baicaoqu winemaking process is even less, which is the only one in Chongqing. The production technique of The Old Lu family's intangible cultural heritage baicao liquor koji uses a total of 108 flavors of Chinese herbal medicines, of which more than 90 flavors can be collected locally, and the insufficient part is supplemented by the Chinese herbal medicine market, as detailed in (Appendix 2).
As mentioned earlier, this wine koji has 108 flavors of Chinese herbal medicine, which are basically wild on the local mountains. There are many types, the growth period is inconsistent, and the composer has to go up the mountain to harvest all year round. That is to say, the production of this koji must not only be familiar with the properties of various plants, but also fully understand their growth cycle and compatibility, especially at any time to go up the mountain to find.
According to the fourth generation of people, the first use of hundred herbs to make the wine koji, because the proportion of Chinese herbal medicine mixed is not mature, the brewed wine Chinese medicine taste is relatively heavy, through several generations of continuous summary and exploration, finally completed the appropriate proportion of the formula, the achievement of the current stable wine koji process.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > where is the good of Baicaoqu wine</h1>
A few days ago, I also asked a friend in Yueyang, Hunan Province, for a few sweet wine songs, brewing mashed earth songs, that is, wine songs with the participation of indigo grass. Originally, the supermarket had Angel sweet wine koji, which was used to brew sweet wine with basically zero failure, and the effect was good. Why do you have to find a dirt song? It is because there are earthen koji made of indigo, and the sweet wine produced has a good taste, and I call it a sweet wine with a soul.
The same is true of liquor. I have a wine tasting master around me, the first time to taste Master Lu's Baicaoqu wine, there is a feeling to say, Chuanfa Xiaoqu wine is counted this, drink it warm as jade, a sip of slightly drunk, and then drink or slightly drunk, the duration is still long, really comfortable!
Also said wine qu, Master Lu said, their hundred grass qu production process, from the Qing Dynasty, five generations of inheritance. Brewed with corn sorghum, it is deeply loved by neighbors and friends and family. Mainly wine koji and traditional craftsmanship, it is still Master Lu and his son himself, each process is carefully operated, completely manual, without any modern industrial and chemical components.
The importance of koji in winemaking is also evident from the understanding of wine koji by my winemaking colleagues, and in a winemaking group where I am located, a master's words are so serious (original):
"Many winemaking colleagues make a mistake: they don't learn to make traditional Chinese herbal wine koji (xiaoqu) without learning to learn the winemaking process. Then we buy sake brewing equipment and koji (the koji sold in the market is very chaotic, industrial sake koji, chemical koji, raw sake koji) and start making sake. If you don't learn to make traditional Chinese herbal wine koji (xiaoqu), you will be led by the nose of those who produce koji and the people who make traditional Chinese herbal koji, so you are very passive. ”
Appendix 1: "Yufufa [2019] No. 16" document "Announcement of the Sixth Batch of Representative Items of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Chongqing"
Appendix 2: The raw materials used in the production technique of Lu's Traditional Chinese Medicine Ququ in Apengjiang include 128 Chinese herbs such as ox knee, Lei Gong Vine, Rhubarb, Tiandong, Ming Dang Ginseng, Bitter Ginseng, Plantain, Xiangyang zi, Huang Jing, Sanqi, Zhimu, Wuhuo, and Neyang Huo.