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I don't know much about brewery, but is there a reason this method might have been lost to time and why the more familiar 'china wines' took over popularity?
by SurrealSoul 9y ago
I don't know much about brewery, but is there a reason this method might have been lost to time and why the more familiar 'china wines' took over popularity?
- moogleii 9y agoI don't know, but if I had to guess, it'd be war. It's ravaged "the mainland" fairly frequently over the last 5000 years.
- baby 9y agoI don't know, but knowing the taste of baijiu I would not have tried drinking their ancient beer.
- peterwwillis 9y agoI don't know which 'china wine' you mean as there are many chinese-origin fermented beverages, but rice wine is popular because it's ridiculously easy to make. All you need is rice, water, and a yeast culture. It's used a lot in cooking as well as for drinking, so you can make a huge batch for pennies and and have several uses for it.
- justin66 9y agoOne practical anthropological explanation I've heard about early beer recipes is that they were basically a way to preserve their ingredients a little longer than they might have otherwise lasted. By that logic, the beverage would change with the ingredients at hand.
- awkwarddaturtle 9y ago5000 years is a long time. Cultures rise and fall, people come and go, wars/famines/etc. Think about how much things changed in the US in a few decades. There was a time when we used to eat horse meat and there was a time when the idea of eating raw fish would have been viewed as horrific. I doubt we'll ever find a definitive reason due to the paucity of historical records from that time. But it probably is a mix of change in fads, wars, cultural shift, etc.
- DonaldFisk 9y agoThe first Chinese history wasn't written down until around 100BC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_of_the_Grand_Historian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_of_the_Grand_Historian) and only covered as far back as the Yellow Emperor (2698BC to 2598BC), and the first Chinese writing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone_script) didn't appear until about 1250BC, so we're entirely reliant on archaeology for the period in question.
- hinkley 9y agoEven tea prep has changed as dramatically over 1200 years in China. As my (Taiwanese) tea dealer reminded me recently, if not for the Japanese adopting Matcha, it would be almost unheard of today, because it's rare to see it in China now.
- janekm 9y agoIt's back in force, KFC in China has Matcha ice cream now ;) (obviously back via Japan, of course...)