Wine

jg chiu. According to Giles' Dictionary chiu is the term for spirits got from grain by distillation. The word by itself, however, is generally used for the result of fermentation, while distilled liquors are called shao chiu (burnt wine), huo chiu (fire wine), sam shu or san shao, (thrice i fired), etc. The Pen ts'ao hang mu mentions sixty four kinds of chiu (wine) before coming to shao chiu (spirits). It states that distillation was first introduced into China in the Yiian dynasty (13th century). The fermented liquor called Shaohing chiu, made at Shao-hsing in Chekiang, is famous. The manufacture dates from very early days and the very invention is credited to this district. Travellers, from Friar Odoric to Abbe Hue, have been enthusiatic over this wine, comparing it with various Spanish and other wines. It is exported! to Australia and California and is to be found in the remotest parts of the Chinese dominions in Central Asia. (Bowra: Customs Reports, Ningpo, 1869). Fen-chiu IMG:p615_2.png:Chinese characters rS is a product of distillation, and Hua-tiao?£ BH or Shaohing wine is a product of fermentation. In the large cities of China generally 70% of the latter and 30% of the former, commonly called samshu, are consumed. Under the Chinese method of manufacture there is much waste, owing to ignorance of the laws of fermentation. The ferment, or as they call it, the "medicine," employed by the Chinese for the sacchrification of the rice always contains some paddy husk; but the native makers put it there solely to prevent the sticking together of the balls of "medicine," which contain as many as 40 or 50 different ingredients, the only useful one being, though they do not know it, the paddy husk. This ferment treated by Past eur i an methods yields very different results, both as regards quantity and quality, fi'om those obtained by Chinese distillers. For example, one picul of rice yields 112 catties of spirit at 40 Gay-Lu ac, whereas the best native distillers seldom obtain more than 65 catties from ne same quantity. Hankow Customs Report, 1909. The production of spirit from kaoliang has been described at length by Hosie in his Manchuria, pp. 226-235. The quantity of spirit obtained by Chinese methods amounts to at best 50%. The Central Laboratory at Dairen, S. Manchuria, has experimented with kaoliang spirit, and produced a higher percentage than that obtained by native methods. The annual "original" export of samshu from Chinese treaty ports is slightly over 300,000 piculs, worth about two million taels.. The chief exporting ports are Tientsin (declining, however), Ningpo (increasing), Swatow and Kowloon district. Foreign export is nearly 100,000 piculs annually, which go to Chinese abroad.