Author: Li Qiaohong (Chief Reporter of Jinhua Daily)
The wine in the blue and white bowl is as thick and soft as amber, and the aroma is strong; take a sip, luscious as a orchid, and have a long aftertaste. After 16 years of release, the green and astringent of the wine has long gone, and the sweet and mellow taste has captured my taste buds just right, making people want to drink more and more.
I've always liked Jinhua wine, and a big reason is because I live in Jinhua. When you go out of the house, you can have a close contact with Jinhua wine anytime, anywhere.
Guzicheng's wine alley is a must-go place to taste Jinhua wine, the alley is more than 600 meters long, a trip is only about ten minutes, but it carries thousands of years of Jinhua wine culture.
In fact, The Wine Mill Lane was not called Wine Mill Lane at the beginning, in the Song Dynasty, it had another name, quite poetic, called Tong Qi Fang. In the Ming Dynasty, a winemaker named Qi Shousan opened a winery here to make wine, using refined white glutinous rice as raw materials, using red yeast and wheat koji as fermentation agents, and using the "feeding method" to brew in separate tanks, with unique flavor and its own style. The wine is amber in color and mellow in taste, becoming a treasure in the wine, that is, Jinhua "Shousheng Wine". The water for its sake brewing is taken from the Jiuquan well deep in the alley, and the good water combined with the high brewing skills quickly spread. Later, "Tongqifang" was renamed "Jiufang Lane". Until the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the wine shop lane was still full of liquor stores, and the Jinhua wine brewed here was continuously sold to various places through the Wu River on the dock.
In ancient times, the export liquor produced by wujiang river basin, Dongyang, Yiwu, Lanxi and other counties in Jinhua region was collectively known as Jinhua wine, also known as Jinhuafu wine. The famous wines of the past generations mainly include: Shousheng wine, misidentified water, Xixi Spring, Dongyang wine, white character wine and so on. According to historical records, the Wuyue king Qian Wei was partial to the south of the Anjiang River, and paid tribute to the five dynasties in the years, of which Shaoxing wine and Jinhua wine were customized tribute wines.
For Jinhua wine, there are a large number of records in ancient Chinese literature.
"In the clouds of the county house, the mood is idle and biased. Family assets Tao Ling wine, monthly Shen Lang money. "The Tang Dynasty poet Han Hong's "Sending Jinhua Wang MingFu" is the earliest poem to mention Jinhua wine. Lu Youshan, a famous poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, drank alcohol and worked tirelessly all his life, and his poetic style had both realist characteristics and romantic colors. He had a "Turtle Hall Drinking Alone" in which he said, "A LanXi self-sacrifice reward, And He refused to be retained by others." The sentence points out that the wine he poured himself was the wine produced in Jinhua Lanxi.
The Yuan Dynasty poet Zhang Yu has a poetic cloud: "Hetai Daomin hides firewood, and the Yanmen Caizi stays in the cold hall." There is a bottle of wine in Jinhua, and the Mao family double jade bottle. "Although the poet encountered wind and rain at night and stayed in the cold hall, he could not contain his love for Jinhua wine in his heart, and could not help but write poems and chant. In the Yuan Dynasty, Jinhua wine was popular throughout the country, especially Dongyang wine was very popular, and the mutual gift of Dongyang wine between Yuan people was mostly recorded in the literature. The song "Top Notes and Retreats" praised Jinhua Huayang Wine: "Chrysanthemums bloom and are returning,...... There are Dongting mandarin, Dongyang wine, West Lake crab. "In the text, Dongting citrus, Dongyang wine, and West Lake crab are called the three best products in Jiangnan. Li Yu, a Qiantang man who lived at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, and his friend Xu Mengji sent Dongyang wine, and he gladly wrote a poem: "The old man sent Dongyang wine far away, and the wild guest opened a new Beihai Zun." No need to look for Meixi on the road, the spring breeze is full of dry air. "In the poem, it is difficult to hide the joy of receiving Jinhua wine.
These brilliant strokes add a bit of elegance to Jinhua wine.
The classical masterpiece "Jin Ping Mei" writes many scenes of drinking, often mentioning various famous wines, and the most written is Jinhua wine. For example, for the twentieth time, Li Zhen'er taught Yingchun: "Yesterday's remaining silver pot was sifted with Jinhua wine." The thirty-fourth time: "Ximen Qing saw a pot of Jinhua wine under the table and asked, 'Where is it?' Li Zhen'er can't say that the book boy bought it. The thirty-fifth time he wrote about eating crabs, and Yue Niang instructed Xiao Yu: "There is still some wine in the house, sift it to eat with your wives." Jin Lian said quickly, "It is good to eat crabs and eat some Jinhua wine." Jinhua wine has become the designated wine for Ximen Qing's daily fun drinking and gift-giving. In addition to the "Golden Plum Bottle", jinhua wine is also described in many novels in the Ming Dynasty, such as the Ming Dynasty novelist Deng Zhimo's "Carved Five Generations of Sazhen People To Curse the Jujube": "The Jinhua wine of Bi Chengcheng was opened, and the slippery jade grits soup was boiled." The "Guest Commentary" says: "The only thing used by Kyoto scholars is Jinhua wine." It can be seen that Jinhua wine was a popular good wine in the Ming Dynasty, and it was also a must-have high-end wine for social occasions at that time.
The Ming Dynasty Feng Shihua said in the "History of Wine": "Jinhua wine, made in Jinhua Province, in recent times, the Jingshi Jiashang Yuyun 'Jinzi Jinhua wine, Go left chuanwen'. "Holding Jinhua wine again and again, it is one of the four best words, wine, chess, and literature." This shows that people at the time highly respected Jinhua wine.
Whether Li Qingzhao has drunk Jinhua wine is unknown, but according to common sense, she must have drunk it, because Li Qingzhao is a person who loves wine, and in her poems, she writes about drinking, drunkenness and decanting so many times. In the fourth year of shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty (1134), she wandered and took refuge in Jinhua, living in The Winery Lane. Perhaps it was Jinhua wine that soothed her deeply traumatized soul and warmed her increasingly tired body and mind, she crossed the wine mill alley, climbed the Eight Wing Tower, sighed with emotion, and gave poetry cloud: "The Eight Wing Tower of the Ancient Winds, the Rivers and Mountains Remain with the Sorrows of Future Generations." The water passes through the southern country for three thousand miles, and the air pressure jiangcheng fourteen states. Since then, a song "Title Eight Wing Lou" has been magnificent and has been sung for thousands of years.
During the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the scholar Liu Tingjie wrote in the "Magazine in the Garden": "The Beijing master will give his will, and the southern wine will be precious, such as Huiquan wine, Wuhu four parallel head, Shaoxing wine, and Jinhua wine." During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the poet Yuan Ming said in the "Suiyuan Food List": "Jinhua wine, there is Shaoxing's qing without its astringency, there is a virgin's sweetness without its customs, but also chen is better, Gai Jinhua all the way, the reason for the water is also clear." Mr. Suiyuan can be regarded as a wine tasting connoisseur, out of preference, he believes that the quality of Jinhua wine exceeds that of Shaoxing wine, the taste is sweet, and there is no bitter taste, which probably has a lot to do with water quality. It can be seen that jinhua wine at that time can be compared with Shaoxing wine, and even slightly superior.
On the north bank of the Baisha Creek in southwest Jinhua, there is legend that there was a government-run winery in the Song Dynasty, which was run by the Pan clan of the rich merchants of Jinhua during the Song Dynasty. Originally known as "Fengfang", after which "Huangfang" was referred to as "Ancient Fang", and today local villagers are still accustomed to calling it "Fangli" or "Winery". With the passage of time, the former wine of the past has long been unknown to today's people, and even the winery has disappeared. Only in the empty grounds is there still a multi-square-meter liquor store foundation...
Today, although Jinhua wine is no longer famous, the style of farmhouse winemaking in the countryside of Jinhua continues to this day. When it is time to make wine, everyone cooks new wine, and every household is mellow. For Jinhua people, every New Year's Festival, Jinhua wine still sings the protagonist.
Guangming Daily (October 29, 2021, 16th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily