文丨酒业家团队（ID：jiuyejia360）
Planning丨Saitama Editor丨Genting Editor丨Genting
"In this land full of historical charm, there is an ancient and mysterious winemaking holy land, which is the location of the ancient cellar pond of Wuliangye and the cradle of the thousand-year-old brewing skills of Chinese liquor......
"The beauty of the living cellar lies in the life, the rotation of the years, the continuous replacement, the rise and fall of life, and the core pulse of life lies in the original germination of life - life."
Recently, the second season of Wuliangye's ancient cellar pool series interpretation video "TA Says: The Beauty of Living Cellar" was officially launched. Ma Fei, a brand management expert and chairman of Jiudu Consulting, while tasting the ancient wine aroma and beauty charm of Yibin, also told the mystery of "making good wine" in Wuliangye ancient cellar pool, leading everyone to explore the rich fragrance history of the thousand-year-old wine capital.
01
The thousand-year-old wine fragrance soaked the city
The "Beauty of the Living Cellar" starts here
More than 4,000 years ago, a wisp of wine fragrance wafted out from the southwest corner, leaving a mark in the long river of history. A pot of wine is drunk in Sanjiang, and the thousand-year-old wine fragrance soaks the city. Yibin is rich in countless fine wines, and Wuliangye, the "King of Chinese Wine", was born here.
"Jinsha comes from the snow ridge, and Minshui comes through Tsing Yi." Where the two great rivers meet, the rolling Yangtze River rushes eastward. The confluence of the three rivers is the "first city of the Yangtze River" - Yibin, Sichuan. Yibin is located near 30 degrees north latitude and has been praised by UNESCO and FAO as "the most suitable area for brewing high-quality pure distilled liquor at the same latitude on the earth", and its unique climate, soil, water, vegetation and microbial conditions provide unique natural advantages for brewing high-quality liquor.
Long years, inheritance of strong fragrance. The geographical environment of time and location has endowed Yibin with unique natural advantages in brewing high-quality liquor; The ancient and profound historical and cultural heritage tells the history of Yibin and Wuliangye. Ma Fei traced the "beauty of the living cellar" of Wuliangye and started here.
When strolling in the Gulou Street and Changchun Street at the mouth of the Sanjiang River, the strong aroma of wine comes to the nose, which is composed of Changfasheng, Lichuan Yong, Tingyuelou, Tianxifu, Liu Dingxing, Zhong Sanhe, Zhang Wanhe, Quan Hengchang Eight Ancient Liquor Workshops The strong fragrance of Wuliangye 501 Liquor Workshop exudes, telling the "Chinese Wine Capital" Yibin and Wuliangye thousand years of time. These stories are history, culture, harmony and beauty, as well as the temperament of the city, but also the heritage of the city, and the temperature that can be touched.
The wine industry learned that the high-quality liquor produced by the Wuliangye 501 brewing workshop is extremely high, and most of it is used as Wuliangye flavored liquor. Not only in the mud of the cellar, but also on the pillars and walls of the workshop, there are also "invisible winemakers" who have been domesticated and domesticated by the ancient cellar pond for countless generations - wine-making microorganisms. Every day, the brewer opens the cellar, stirs the dregs, mixes, retorts, distills, picks the wine, spreads the cooling, and puts it into the cellar...... Almost every process is passed down by the master. They are all guardians of the lineage, and they have a mystical conversation with the microorganisms of the ancient cellar pond every day. And the aroma of wine wafts out along the windows and tile cracks, and it seems that the life of Gurong Prefecture for thousands of years has stayed here.
02
If the wine is good, the cellar must be old
The National Treasure Cellar Pool is of exceptional quality
"The thousand-year-old cellar is ten thousand years old, and the wine must be old in the cellar."
There is an old saying that has been circulating in the liquor circle for a long time, which explains the importance of the cellar pond. On a certain level, to understand the cellar, to understand the Chinese liquor.
The 501 workshop, which is composed of eight ancient wineries, preserves the most complete crypt-type fermentation cellar with uninterrupted continuous fermentation found in China. This is not only a historical witness to the birth and development of Wuliangye, but also an important relic of China's traditional liquor making skills and the development of the liquor industry. In 2005, a piece of ancient cellar mud from Wuliangye Changfa Shengjiu was permanently collected by the National Museum of China, becoming the only "living cultural relic" in the museum's collection. At present, Wuliangye Yuanming Ancient Cellar Pond Group has been selected as a national key cultural relics protection unit, a national industrial heritage, and a "Tentative List of China's World Cultural Heritage", writing "living and wonderful". In 2021, the 18-month "Archaeological Wuliangye" project by many industry experts brought forward the age of the ancient cellar pond of Wuliangye from the early Ming Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty from the scientific level, once again confirming the supremacy of the "King of Chinese Wine".
It is reported that after more than 700 years of uninterrupted maintenance and use, the microorganisms in Wuliangye Yuanming Ancient Cellar Pool have been able to grow and reproduce stably in the unique natural environment of Yibin. The microorganisms in the pit mud have been continuously domesticated and multiplied, and the population has become more and more advanced, and there are more and more colonies and aromatic substances.
According to surveys, there are more than 10 billion microorganisms in each gram of ancient cellar mud, and they together form a huge microbial community, which takes the dregs as the nutrient source, and the pit mud and dregs as the activity place, participates in the synthesis of the flavor substances of koji wine and the improvement of the physicochemical structure of the pit mud. In particular, it is known for its comprehensive flavor of sake".
The beauty of the living cellar lies in the "live". A "living" word has witnessed the vicissitudes of time and the greatness of life. The "liveness" itself lies in inheritance and development, innovation and growth, and has always maintained an advanced state of evolution and upgrading.
03
"Twin National Treasures" + "Twin Heritages"
Continue to polish the gold-lettered signboard of "China's Wine King".
As a typical representative of Chinese liquor, Wuliangye was born in the Tang Dynasty, flourished in the Song Dynasty, excelled in the Yuan Dynasty, became in the Ming Dynasty, and was named after the Qing Dynasty, which has been inherited for more than 1,000 years and has "double national treasures": the first national treasure is the ancient cellar pond group that has been continuously produced for nearly 700 years by the national cultural preservation unit, and the second national treasure is the ancient cellar mud that is permanently treasured by the National Museum as the only "living cultural relic"; It has "double heritage": the first heritage is the eight ancient brewing workshops (501 brewing workshop) of Wuliangye, which has been rated as a national industrial heritage, and the second heritage is the traditional brewing skills of Wuliangye liquor, which has been rated as a "national intangible cultural heritage". Based on this, Wuliangye is also the only enterprise in the industry that has won the highest honor in the field of quality management for four times.
Relying on the more than 700-year-old "living cellar pool" of the Yuan and Ming dynasties, Wuliangye has continuously innovated on the basis of the ancient "living skills" of "Taoism and Nature" that have been inherited for more than 1,000 years, and further strengthened the key technical research such as the aging of the cellar and the mechanism of microbial fermentation.
In recent years, researchers have successfully discovered a number of new strains in Wuliangye ancient cellar mud, which has confirmed the uniqueness of the microbial community of Wuliangye ancient cellar mud from the perspective of microorganisms, and gradually explored the core mystery of "strong fragrance of a great country".
Among them, in 2021, Wuliangye and the team of Professor Xu Yan of Jiangnan University collaborated to tackle key problems and isolated a main caproic acid bacterium with glucose and lactic acid as carbon sources from the old cellar mud of Wuliangye, which was named "WLY-1368 bacteria" for the main functional bacteria of the mainland strong aroma liquor.
In 2022, the technical team of Wuliangye and the team of Professor Xu Yan of Jiangnan University discovered for the first time in the world a new strain of Bacteroides proprotophilus (code JNU-WLY501, referred to as "501 Propionic Acid Bacteria") from the centuries-old ancient cellar mud of the Wuliangye 501 brewing workshop, which further unveiled the mystery of the formation mechanism of "Great Country Strong Fragrance".
Subsequently, Wuliangye isolated the number WLY-L-M-1 (Saccharomyces aureus) and WLY-B-L2 (Clostridium cinogenes) in the ecological environment of the ancient cellar pond group. The former further proves the uniqueness and irreplaceability of Wuliangye's brewing environment and ecology, and effectively promotes the understanding of microorganisms and metabolic mechanisms of Chinese baijiu brewing to a new level, while the latter can produce important flavor components such as butyric acid, ethyl valerate, ethyl acetate and 2-pentanone in liquor.
This series of important discoveries has greatly promoted the progress of microbial research in winemaking, and provided a more solid backing for Wuliangye to brew high-quality wines.
In the process of inheritance and innovation, Wuliangye continues to improve the rate of famous liquor and strengthen the background color of "quality Wuliangye".
It is reported that more videos of the second season of "TA Says: The Beauty of the Living Cellar" will also be launched soon, telling the mystery of "making good wine" in Wuliangye Ancient Cellar Pool in a thoughtful, inspiring and easy-to-understand popular science language, showing the "living" inheritance of Wuliangye's brewing art for more than 1,000 years and the unique style and scarce value of the Yuanming Ancient Cellar Pool, and further polishing the golden signboard of "Chinese Wine King".