At the end of spring, spring flowers will run out, which is the rainy season in Jiangnan and the maturity of plums.
Plum, also called plum, is a kind of fruit with unique flavor. Immature plums, green and dripping, are called plums. Golden when ripe, called Huangmei; Plum is sour and thirst-quenching, crisp and refreshing, and the idiom "looking at plum to quench thirst" refers to it.
The fruit of ebony is large in skin and thin in flesh, small in stone, juicy and high in acidity. It is rich in all kinds of amino acids needed by human body, and the acid is sweet, especially rich in fruit acid and vitamin C. According to Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica, it is clearly recorded that "plum blossoms in winter and ripens all over the trees". The efficacy and sour taste of green plum play a great role, which can not only stimulate appetite, but also resist aging.
When most people mention green plum, they will think of the figure of green plum in ancient poems, the wonderful time of "You, my love, riding a bamboo horse, trotting around and throwing green plum", or the ignorant feelings of "leaning against the door to smell green plum"?
The history book says, "Making harmonious soup will only make sour and salty plums." It means that green plum tastes sour and bitter, and it is an important condiment besides salt when people drink soup. However, even if the sour taste is slightly heavy, the crispness of green plums still wins people's appetite for food. The interest in eating plums became very popular after the Tang and Song Dynasties, and even evolved several ways to eat plums.
Lu You wrote in "Wild Glory in Early Summer": "The chaff fire simmers bitter bamboo shoots in the forest, and the dense pot sinks the well to dye the green plums"; There is another sentence in "Mountain Residence in Late Spring": "Bitter bamboo shoots are mixed with sauce first, and green plums are dipped in salt." It can be seen that Lu You, a great poet, has a soft spot for childhood.
But "green plum with wine" is undoubtedly the most elegant way to eat green plum. During the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao and Liu Bei "made an inventory of green plums and a statue of cooking wine." . The story of "two people sitting together and drinking heartily" also makes "green plum cooking wine" synonymous with heroes.
Plums are old, tender and moderate, sweet and sour, and are most suitable for wine making. "The hero was boiled as a teenager" is a scene in the story of the Three Kingdoms, and later scholars seem to have a special liking for it.
Yan Shu, a poet in the Song Dynasty, wrote in "Complaining about Love": "Cooking wine in childhood is new. It gets colder and colder in spring. I met the right person under the flowers in the southeast of the city. " Xie Yi, a poet in the Song Dynasty, wrote in "Recalling Jiangnan": "Enjoy yourself, dance sleeves and roll yarn. Pick green plums, taste boiled wine, stir-fry white snow and taste new tea. The moon is on the eaves. "
He Menggui, a poet of the Song Dynasty, also wrote in Man Fang Ting: "Swallows are withered, dragons and grandchildren are old, and the forest pond is shut in the shade." In the breezy courtyard in the afternoon, people try to wear thin clothes. Count all the red flowers, collect the green plums, and make the first wine. The heavy door is quiet, a curtain of rain, and the water is fragrant. "
Plum wine-making first appeared in Han Dynasty. From the Han and Tang Dynasties to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, not only plum wine, but also yellow wine, jujube wine, mulberry wine, citrus wine, pomegranate wine, peach wine and pear wine appeared. For example, William Wang's "Liangzhou Ci" says: "If you want to drink pipa, you should urge it immediately. Lying on the beach drunk, you don't laugh. How many people fought in ancient times? "
Song, a scientist in the Ming Dynasty, said in the seventeenth volume of "Qu Berry" of "Heavenly Creations": "In ancient times, Qu wine was brewed with glutinous rice, which later generations hated and lost blood." According to the documents of Zhou Dynasty, Qu Zi can be interpreted as the mother of wine or "wine".
China has a long history of brewing technology. Otherwise, there are hundreds of Li Bai's poems about fighting wine. Li Qingzhao was drunk more than ten times in her poems, and even "lost her way". Throughout the history of literature, Su Shi should be the most literate in China. After middle age, his life and creation are inseparable from wine. For example, "when I am drunk, it is easy to get it." From then on, I bought sheep to make wine, "I miss you and your official residence cold, and new poems are warm with wine", "I remember when I entered the city, and I was drunk when I went back to sleep", "The wine in the mountain city is too thin to drink, and you are happy to drink a cup of moon" and so on.
Plum wine should be exactly a kind of fruit wine. In China, there are not only many kinds of fruit wine, but also a long history. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Meng Tuo, a man who helped the wind, sent a homemade welcome wine to Zhang Rang, the great eunuch, and was awarded the post of secretariat of Liangzhou. In the Tang Dynasty, Hu food prevailed in Chang 'an and Gaochang (now Turpan), and wine was introduced into the court.
According to Jin Zhezhi and other books, "wine, jujube wine and wine" are all common products in fruit wine in Yuan Dynasty. Jujube wine was once called "porch wine" in Beijing in the middle of Ming Dynasty.
Making wine with bayberry was popular in Lingxi as early as the Jin Dynasty, and it is not allowed to drink unless it is a distinguished guest. Sweet wine brewed with citrus was called "Dongting Spring" in Song Dynasty. Yamanashi wine is brewed by natural fermentation, which was called "true brewing" by the ancients.
"Hua Mu Kao" said: "Yamanashi is delicious". "Use a big Weng to store a hundred pieces, cover the mouth with grapes, and intend to hide it for a long time, eat it, and forget it for a long time. Half a year later, because of the garden, I suddenly smelled the wine, which was cold and lovely, and Zhan Ran was sweet and really brewed. Drink and get drunk. "
During the Qianlong period, Cao Cao said in the "Western Regions": "At the beginning of the year, people made wine at their discretion, and each family counted stones. Men and women happily gather in the shade of grass or orchards to drink ... peaches can also be used to make wine, which tastes slightly sour. In autumn, the grapes are ripe, the wine is very good, and the taste is full ... Misha, the flesh is like fine sand, and it is sweet, so people can take it to make wine. "
But with the passage of time, in the Tang and Song Dynasties, plum wine frequently appeared in poems and written records. It is difficult to find traces of plum wine because the emperors of the Yuan Dynasty banned alcohol. On the contrary, neighboring Japan, after the introduction of plum wine in the Tang Dynasty, gradually developed into a school of its own. Plum wine has taken root everywhere and become a business card of Japanese food culture. Even when Japanese-style fragrant road is refining smoked food, plum wine is widely used to blend spices.
The brewing methods of ancient fruit wine are mainly as follows: one is natural fermentation through the sugar of the fruit itself. The other is to add distiller's yeast to fruit juice, like the method of brewing glutinous rice wine. The other is to distill the fermented wine into retort to become shochu fruit wine.
This method appeared in the Ming Dynasty. For example, Gao Lian wrote in his book Notes on Drinking and Eating: "Take a barrel of grape juice, stir it with Qusi Liang, seal it in an urn, and it will naturally become wine, which is more fragrant." He left a valuable recipe for brewing koji to future generations.