1974 and 1985 found a complete brewing workshop in the middle of Shang Dynasty in Taixi site in Gaocheng, Hebei Province. The facilities are also similar to the Dawenkou cultural period mentioned above. It is worth noting that among these brewing instruments, there are cookware such as pottery ding or general helmet, which shows that the raw materials are cooked first and then brewed. The steamed raw materials are convenient for microbial koji making; It is also convenient to be decomposed by enzymes, fermented into wine, and then filtered to remove distiller's grains to obtain wine liquid (it is not excluded that the prepared wine mash can be eaten directly).
It can be speculated that 5,000 years ago, our ancestors had adopted the way of koji, and the wine-making technology was relatively perfect, which roughly included several processes such as grain cooking, fermentation, filtration and wine-making.
Written records about wine-making first appeared in the Confucian classic Zhou Li.
Zhou Li is an ancient book in the pre-Qin period and one of the famous Thirteen Classics. This book records the social system, cultural relics, aesthetic writing and craft level of the Zhou Dynasty, and also reveals the wine industry at that time. "Zhou Li? "Tianguan Zhi": "Jiuzheng, four sergeants, eight corporal, two prefects, eight histories, eight majors and eighty-eight disciples. Wine drinkers, ten people, thirty women, three hundred people. "In other words, the Western Zhou Dynasty established a set of institutions to strictly manage sour wine and wine." Wine is in charge of wine laws and regulations, and wine materials are given in the style of writing, which means that wine is in charge of all laws and regulations related to wine. According to the French brewing method, all kinds of brewing materials are distributed to winemakers, and the wine needed for rural drinking and other businesses is also handled accordingly. It can be seen that this institution has a series of systems, professional technicians, fixed sour wine methods and raw material supply measures.
So, what kind of wine was brewed at that time? "Zhou Li Tianguan" says: "Distinguish the names of five qi, one is called dish qi, the other is called qi qi, the third is called ang qi, the fourth is called suo qi, and the fifth is called arrogance. Distinguish between three kinds of wine, one day wine, two days wine and three days sake. " The so-called "five qi" and "three wines" are all kinds of rice wine made at that time, which are generally divided into two categories: "five qi" is one category, "qi" and "fasting" were the same word in ancient times, and "qi" means fasting and sacrifice. "Five Qi" is five kinds of wine with different specifications for sacrifice, which is characterized by light taste and no filter, and is only used for sacrifice and posturing. Sanjiu "is filtered wine for people to drink."
Specifically, playing chess is a thin wine made of rotten wine, just like the old white wine that is not going now. Qiqi, a thin wine mixed with juice and me, has few distillers' yeast and is cooked overnight, which is a little sweet, just like the present sweet wine. Angqi is a kind of turbid wine mixed with white wine. Tiki is a red and turbid wine. And Shen Qi is a slightly clear wine. When it sinks, the wine juice becomes clear water.
"Sanjiu" is a wine for people to drink, and it is a wine brewed according to the occasion, that is, a new wine that can be brewed and drunk at any time during festivals, ceremonies and sacrifices. Storage time should not be too long, and it is easy to ferment and deteriorate. Yellow rice wine is a kind of wine with a long brewing time. Mature in winter, mature in spring, more mellow and clearer than the previous wine.
This shows that the brewing technology of the Western Zhou Dynasty has been relatively perfect. Because for a long time in ancient times, wine and wine trough were eaten directly without separation. Now this turbid thin wine "Wuqi" is only used as a sacrificial decoration, and people drink mostly refined "Sanjiu". In the 1980s, two bottles of ancient wine dating back about 2,200 years were unearthed in Pingshan County, Hebei Province, and stored in a flat bronze bottle, each weighing about 10 kg. One is dark green, and the other is aged wine. If it is not superb technology, how can it be stored for more than 2200 years without deterioration? There is no similar record in China ancient books, which shows that there are many interesting and difficult mysteries about wine.
A picture of the Han Dynasty stone relief kitchen unearthed from the balcony of Zhucheng, Shandong Province, shows the production process of Sanjiu and so on. Some pictures in the picture vividly describe the brewing situation at that time: a man kneels to mash koji, and there is a clay pot next to it to soak koji powder; One person is cooking with firewood, one is chopping firewood, one is fiddling with rice at the edge of retort, and one is responsible for filtering koji juice into rice and stirring the fermented mash evenly. There are two people in charge of filtering the wine, and the other one is holding a spoon, probably to put the wine into the bottle. Below are the big barrels for fermentation, all of which are put in the wine cellar. Probably a man drank wine secretly and was being beaten after being found. Materials for filtering wine can be packed in silk bags and squeezed dry by hand. The filtered wine is put into a small bottle for further aging.
According to this picture, experts imagine that the technological process of brewing in the Eastern Han Dynasty is as follows:
Koji block-saccharification-soaking koji-filtering koji juice.
Brewing raw materials-cooking-cooling-vat fermentation (distiller's grains)-filtering-filling into small bottles.
Cheng Huai believes that China is the birthplace of wine culture and one of the first countries to master wine-making technology. An important invention of China ancient wine-making technology is to make wine with distiller's yeast. Daqu contains filamentous fungi (molds) with saccharified starch and yeasts that promote alcoholization. It is a great progress in brewing technology to combine saccharification and alcoholization of starchy raw materials by using distiller's yeast. It has been a long time since the ancestors of China spontaneously used microorganisms to artificially control microorganisms, and used natural conditions to select the best and restrict the worst to make wine yeast. It can be said that in the history of thousands of years of civilization development in China, the development of wine and culture basically goes hand in hand.