Author: Liu Xuegang
The ancient town of Jingzhi has a traditional wine "Spring Opening Urn", also known as "Peach Blossom Urn" and "Peach Blossom Wine". In the spring and March, when the peach blossoms first bloom, the brewing microorganism enters an unprecedented period of activity. Peach blossom flood during the winemaking busy. The wine is sweet in the mouth and fragrant after drinking. In the early Qing Dynasty, the poet Liu Yiming was on his way through Anqiu, visiting friends to drink, leaving behind fourteen beautiful words: "Peach blossoms flowing water in spring, drizzling rain and oblique wind to the door." ”
Its winemaking follows the natural order. During the winter solstice, sorghum, rice, glutinous rice, wheat, etc. are crushed and steamed; the koji is crushed, mixed with the steamed grain, and then loaded into the cellar pond and fermented. Hear the sound of peach blossoms opening, that is, open the cellar to steam wine. It is particularly important to select materials with fine materials, exquisite craftsmanship and exquisiteness. The materials selected for koji or pickle making have the requirements of land and time, and the cellars, fire pits and barrels used for processing pay attention to the texture, size and combination, and are never perfunctory.
Let's start with music making. The song of winemaking is best with fuqu, and the section of the song has three golden rings of fire, as if the beautiful reflection of the dancing posture of the microorganisms has been fixed and carefully carved by the carving knife of time. On a three-volt day, when the large lotus leaves hold up the delicate red flowers, elves such as Aspergillus, root mold, Mullus, Aspergillus flaskyx, and Endosporus are also floating down from the air of the curved room, rushing enthusiastically in the brick-like koji embryo. Koji embryos are made of sorghum and wheat. Sorghum wheat is carefully selected, full of grains, bright color, fresh and sweet. The wheat is crushed into seven or eight petals, added to the right amount of water, kneaded by hand into a ball without sticking to the hand, and wrapped in semi-dry and soft lotus leaves, placed in a rectangular wooden curved mold. The fragrance and warmth of the lotus leaves, the slight sweetness and mellowness of the curved material, like silky colored silk, flying, winding, forming an active and exciting field, and the real protagonists are those invisible elves, they are breeding, in motion, just like a play, the end of the life and the end of the ugly starring, gentle and frugal to make all the appearances. Winemaking must be stored for more than half a year, when it is first cut into small pieces, and then ground into fine koji powder. After this refinement, sorghum wheat is no longer flour, but something that can change the nature of things - turning particles into agar.
Peach blossom wine has a peculiar aroma, which is very close to the caramelized aroma of fried sesame seeds, known as "sesame aroma". The raw materials for sake brewing are simple, including sorghum, wheat, bran, rice, glutinous rice, etc., except for no sesame seeds. But the process is complicated, the process is meticulous, and if there is a slight difference, the sesame fragrance will be completely gone. If koji-making is sowing seeds and seedlings, then winemaking is settling in the knot.
Winemaking is the norm for grain in the mountains to escape from porridge and rice, complete the conversion from granules to agar pulp, and achieve the improvement from food and clothing to abundance. A square fire pit two or three meters deep, dug indoors. A furnace was built on the wall of the pit, on which a large iron pot was placed along the flat edge, and above the iron pot was a conical wooden barrel, and a hemispherical tin pot was lifted. To ferment the sake in winter, add the sorghum husk and mix well. The water in the iron pot is boiled until it boils, and the sake is slowly loaded into the barrel with a wooden shovel. The iron pot heats up, the rising steam stirs the wine in the barrel, stirs the wine, meets the tin pot filled with cold water, it becomes a liquor liquid, along the bottom wall of the tin pot, the small snake like a snake into the wine plate, and then, rushing to the basket woven with bamboo.
The cold water of the floating pot is constantly updated, and the steaming pot is steamed for ten minutes to produce wine. The wine that comes out three minutes ago is called the wine head, and it is poured out. After the floating pot is replaced by the second pot of cold water, the wine flowing out is called "two pot heads", the wine quality is the best, the drink is sweet and refreshing, and the sweetness is endless.
To identify the quality of wine, there is a simple way of observing, which winemakers call "pulling slips". The slip is also called a filler, a tin funnel. Pour the original wine into the slip and mix it with the amount of water. The winemaker uses the right middle finger to block the mouth of the wine under the slip, and when the mixture is appropriate, release the middle finger, and the mixed wine leaks into the basin, and a dense layer of bubbles the size of sorghum grains will appear in the wine basin, which is the hop. If the hops can stay in the pot for more than ten seconds without breaking, it is called "standing flowers". But where the good wine that "stands on the flowers" is lit, it is a green flame, once heated, the wine is particularly fragrant, and the aroma seems to crawl out of many small bugs, arching people's nostrils itching, the head is a little dizzy, it is already smoked and cultivated.
Guangming Daily (2021-05-21 15 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily