Baijiu brand the pinnacle of quality and heritage

The township of Xinghuacun in the Shanxi city of Fenyang has been a benchmark of China's alcoholic beverage industry for millennia with its long history of production and products with distinctive quality.

Archaeological excavations in Xinghuacun, which started in 1982, have provided much evidence to show that this ancient township was the birthplace of the Chinese alcoholic beverage.

One of the remarkable findings was a waving spindle-shaped bottle with a distinctive feature of Yangshao Culture, an ancient civilization in the middle reaches of the Yellow River between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago. Researchers believe that the bottle was China's earliest utensil discovered for brewing alcoholic beverages some 6,000 years ago.

Xinghuacun, as well as its neighboring areas, is one of the pioneers in making high-purity cereal wine in China, with a production history dating back to the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-581).

During that time the renowned high-purity cereal wine was called Fenqingjiu, or clear wine of Shanxi. With Xinghuacun as the center, Fenyang was the major production base for Fenqingjiu.

Fenqingjiu had been a favorite of royal families during the Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577), according to historical records.

The quality of the Fenyang-made alcoholic beverages was further improved during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) with the emergence of distilled, higher-purity liquor, or baijiu. Xinghuacun, where today's Xinghuacun Fenjiu Group is based, has been a hub for liquor production since the Tang Dynasty, according to researchers. They said the liquor products from Xinghuacun became popular in the markets because of their purity, clear-as-water quality and unique mellow taste.

The quality and popularity of Fenyang-made liquor, or Fenjiu, have lasted to the modern times. It also reached its peak of international recognition in the early 20th century when it won a gold medal during the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, the United States.

Executives at Xinghuacun Fenjiu, which is deemed a representative inheritor of this millennium-long liquor-making tradition, revealed the secrets behind the excellent quality of local liquor.

These include centuries-old techniques such as fermenting in casks buried in earth for temperature stabilization and double-distilling for improved purity.

The executives said growing cereals in its own farms is a unique practice at Xinghuacun Fenjiu for quality control. The company now operates cereal farms totaling 74,000 hectares.