Rice-Wine Workshop

Chinese people prefer to drink rice wine just as westerners like champagne or whisky. Besides, many rice wine drinkers are specialized in how to make wine. In some rich family, there used to be their own wine workshop to meet their family’s need of wine. Especially, southeast people of China are more famous for their love of rice wine, just for the influence of tradition that they think good poems, essays, paintings and calligraphies are mostly coming from drinking rice wine, and they think more inspirations would be grasped after their drinking. Southeast people in China living Jiangnan area (roughly means the area of Yangtze River Delta) are conventionally featured by their bookish and academic personality. They like to be the talents of literature and arts. And the rice wine traditionally closely connected with literature and arts because nearly all the masters of literature and thought are the drinking lovers such as Zhang Xu, Su Dongpo, Li Po, and Tao Yuanming and so on. That is why in Wuzhen rice wine is so popular in the past. On the other hand, it is also connected with local climate.

The area of Wuzhen abounds in rice. At the end of the year, each family makes rice wine by themselves. The rice wine here is called Dujiu or Tianbaijiu(Sweet-White Wine), and the civilians of Wuzhen call it Three-White Wine, because in the local historical record: the rice wine was made of white rice, white flour and white water. This wine was sweet and fragrant; people at different ages can drink it. Traditionally during the time of spring festival in countryside, the rice wine was used for serving the visiting guests. In Wuzhen Town, Gaogongsheng Rice-Wine Workshop is most famous. Visiting there, you see the process of making rice wine and freely taste the new wine. It is a workshop with the absolutely traditional equipments and techniques.