People have loved drinking since ancient times, and there are various legends about wine.
First, the origin of wine
In ancient times, the origin of wine-making was often regarded as the invention of someone, who was regarded as the ancestor of wine-making. There are several different versions about the origin of wine in ancient books:
Yidi liquor making
Books such as The Warring States Policy and Shiben all record that Yu Xia invented wine in a foreign country. The history book Lv's Spring and Autumn Annals in the second century BC said, "Yidi makes wine". The Warring States Policy, edited by Liu Xiang in the Han Dynasty, further explained: "In the past, the emperor's daughter asked Yidi to make wine beautifully. When she entered Yu, Yu drank it. She said,' There must be a drinking country in the future. ????????????????????????? 12
Wine-making began in the period of the Yellow Emperor.
Another legend shows that people began to make wine in the era of the Yellow Emperor. Su Wen in Huangdi Neijing of Han Dynasty recorded the scene of Huangdi and Qi Bo discussing wine making. Huangdi Neijing also mentioned an ancient wine-fermented cheese, which is a sweet wine made of animal milk. Huangdi is the same ancestor of the Chinese nation, and many inventions and creations appeared in the period of Huangdi. The book Huangdi Neijing is actually the work of Huangdi by later generations, and its credibility needs to be verified.
Du Kang makes wine.
Du Kang's wine-making spread widely, and it is said that Du Kang began to make wine in the Xia Dynasty. "Shiji Yuan" has the saying of "Du Kang Brewing"; The entries explaining the word "wine" in Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Eastern Han Dynasty include: "Du Kang made wine". "Shiben" also has the same statement. However, it is difficult for even the ancients to know exactly when Du Kang was born. Gao Cheng, a Song Dynasty poet, also said in Ji Yuan: "I don't know who Du Kang is. People in ancient and modern times have said a lot about the beginning of wine making." . Kang is a master of brewing, or he is the founder of sorghum brewing. There are also many winemaking places in Du Kang: Yichuan, Ruyang and Baishui counties, and Dukang wine is still being produced.
2. the most primitive wine
The most primitive wine should be naturally fermented from sugary fruits. Some people call it fruit with wine flavor, but it is not wine making.
The oldest recorded wine is the wine brewed with animal milk in nomadic times (natural fermentation). Some books call it the first generation of artificial drinks and wine. It is said that ethnic minority areas such as Inner Mongolia and Tibet still have the habit of brewing milk wine.
Three. Cereal wine making
The wine we are talking about now generally refers to grain wine making.
As human society enters the agricultural society, there are more and more grains. However, due to the limitation of storage methods at that time, grains will inevitably germinate and become moldy. At this time, as long as the water content is appropriate, it is possible to ferment. After constant imitation and exploration, grain brewing was "born" (maybe 7000 years ago). Huainanzi written by Liu An, King of Huainan in Han Dynasty: "The beauty of wine-making began in Reggie", that is, the origin of grain wine-making began almost at the same time as agriculture.
Pottery wine vessels were found at Dawenkou cultural site in Tai 'an, Shandong Province, at least four or five thousand years ago. This discovery shows that the brewing industry in China started at least 5,000 years ago.
Four. yeast for making hard liquor
Raw grain brewing consists of germinated and moldy grains. In primitive society, due to improper preservation, grain will be moldy or germinated after being wetted, and moldy or germinated grain can be fermented into wine. Therefore, these moldy or germinated grains are the most primitive koji and raw materials for fermentation. Perhaps there was a time when moldy grain and germinated grain could not be separated, so there were two things that could be used to make wine in ancient times. Moldy grain is called qu, and germinated grain is called tiller. In the middle and late period of farming, people kept trial-producing and finally produced artificial qu, which was separated from tillers.
"In ancient times, wine was brewed, and the tiller made glutinous rice. Later generations were tired of glutinous rice, so they lost it, and the method of combining tillering died "(China's" beer "never developed).
Brewing wine with Qu is the original creation of our working people. The appearance of Qu is the greatest invention of fermentation technology in ancient China. And it has brought far-reaching influence to modern industry. With distiller's yeast, it developed from tillering saccharification (low alcohol) to simultaneous bilateral fermentation (double fermentation) until today's brewing industry.
It is said that it was not until190' s that French talents isolated molds with strong sugar substitution ability from China Daqu and used them in alcohol production, which broke through the situation that malt was indispensable as saccharifying agent in western brewing. In addition, grain koji-making is a good way to preserve microorganisms with solid culture. Some people think that distiller's yeast should be regarded as five great inventions together with the four great inventions.
Verb (abbreviation of verb) the origin of distilled liquor
China liquor is one of the six largest distilled liquors in the world. The wine mentioned above, now, should belong to yellow rice wine and white wine, and it must break through the steaming.
There are also many theories about the origin of distilled liquor.
1. Distilled liquor was founded in the Yuan Dynasty.
Li Shizhen, a medical scientist in Ming Dynasty, first put forward this view. In the Compendium of Materia Medica, he wrote: "Soju is not an ancient law, and it was founded in the Yuan Dynasty. The method is to use strong liquor and distiller's grains, steam them, and take dewdrops from containers. Any sour wine can be steamed and burned.
Distilled liquor and distiller have been recorded in the literature of Yuan Dynasty. For example, eating and drinking is about to be written in 133 1 year. Therefore, at the beginning of14th century, there was distilled liquor in China. However, whether it was created in the Yuan Dynasty is not clearly recorded in historical materials.
2. Distilled liquor existed in Song Dynasty.
The existing Song Dynasty distiller is one of the most important bases to support this view. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhang Shinan recorded an example that a distiller was used to distill flower dew in Volume V of Travels. In the Song Dynasty, the Fontaine Manual also painted the figure of the distiller at that time.
In the literature records of Song Dynasty, the word "shochu" appears frequently, so it is speculated that the word "shochu" is distilled shochu. For example, Volume 4 of the Song Ci "Remembering Injustice" in the Song Dynasty records: "Snails hurt people, ..., making the population contain rice vinegar or soju, and sucking it to suck its poison". Some people think that "shochu" here should be distilled shochu.
Sufficient evidence proves that there was a still similar to today's in the Song Dynasty. In 75, a set of Jin Shizong-era copper-fired hip flask was unearthed in Hebei, and its structure and principle were very similar to those of traditional distillers in China (according to research, the casting age was not later than 1 16 1).
Compared with brewing wine, distilled wine has one more distillation process in the manufacturing process, and the key equipment is still. Therefore, the invention of distiller is the prerequisite for the origin of distilled liquor, but the appearance of distiller is not the absolute condition for the origin of distilled liquor. Because distillers can be used not only for steaming wine, but also for distilling other substances, such as spices and mercury.
3. Distilled liquor was started in the Tang Dynasty
Whether there was distilled shochu in Tang Dynasty has always been the focus of people's attention. The word shochu first appeared in the literature of Tang Dynasty. For example, Bai Juyi (772-846) wrote, "Newly-cooked litchi has a cockscomb color, and shochu opens amber fragrance first". Tao Yong (a middle-aged man of Tang Dahe) wrote a poem: "Since I have been cooking wine in Chengdu, don't think about going to Chang 'an. Among some famous wines listed by Li Zhao in Supplement to the National History of the Tang Dynasty, there is "Jiannan Burning Spring". So some modern people think that the mentioned shochu is distilled shochu. However, according to the method of shochu recorded in Discarding Miscellanies in Tang Dynasty, it is a method of heating to promote wine aging. For example, it is recorded in the book: "Drinking in the south is' burning', that is, solid wine, which is full of jars and mud. If it is cooked with fire, otherwise it will not be drunk. "Obviously, this should not be a distillation operation of wine. In the Song Dynasty, this operation was also called "fire forcing wine". Therefore, it is difficult to establish distilled shochu in the Tang Dynasty.
Distilled liquor originated in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
In recent years, the Shanghai Museum has discovered bronze stills from the Eastern Han Dynasty. The age of the distiller was identified by bronze experts as a product of the early or middle Eastern Han Dynasty. Distillers are used for distillation experiments, and the alcohol content is 26.6-20.4. Distilled wine. In addition, a seemingly identical bronze distiller was unearthed in Huangni Town, Chuzhou, Anhui Province. The structure of bronze distillers in the Eastern Han Dynasty was similar to that in the Jin Dynasty. Distillers are divided into retort and kettle. The height is 53.9cm. There is a part for storing feed liquid or solid fermented grains in the retort, and there is a condensation chamber. The condensation chamber has a pipe joint, which can make the condensate flow out of the distiller, and the upper part of the kettle body has an inlet for feeding at any time.
The viewpoint that distilled liquor originated in the Eastern Han Dynasty has not been widely accepted. Because it is difficult to explain the problem with only one distiller with unknown purpose. In addition, there are no traces of distilled liquor in many historical materials unearthed in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and there is no written evidence.
With regard to the origin of distilled liquor, modern scholars at home and abroad are still collecting and studying information on this issue. With the enrichment of archaeological data and the inquiry of ancient documents, people's understanding of the origin of distilled liquor will gradually deepen. Because this involves not only the distillation of wine, but also an epoch-making distiller.