You were born in Shanxi. Wherever you go, your friends like to call you "Jealous Old West". I particularly like this title.
Shanxi mature vinegar has a unique, rich and mellow taste, and has the reputation of being fragrant and intoxicating to millions of people. If you come to Shanxi as a guest, there will always be a small porcelain pot in the center on the dining table of every household. It is filled with brown-red mature vinegar. You only need to gently open the lid of the porcelain pot, and a scent will instantly hit your nostrils, as if This unique fragrance is introduced into your body in an instant, and its nutrients are even in your blood. You want to ask why it is so fragrant? Because it is included in the three meals a day of Shanxi people for generations.
I still remember when I was young, in our rural hometown of Wangshi Village, Lan County, Shanxi, every household knew the art of making vinegar. At the end of autumn and early winter, when the sorghum harvest was completed, my mother got busy. She first used a sieve to collect a dustpan of sorghum husks, washed them clean, and used them as a primer for making vinegar; then she put two large porcelain jars on the hot On the kang head, put the sorghum and rice seeds in proportion, and surround it with sacks filled with oats straw. The remaining work is to use firewood to burn the kang every day. During that time, every kang head is warm. Sometimes people who are so hot can't sleep all night long.
In the following twenty days of fermentation, my mother would open it every morning and evening and fold it with her hands from bottom to top, until the room was filled with a strong smell of vinegar and the sorghum in the tank turned into When it turns a rich red color, the vinegar is considered to be brewed successfully. At this time, my father would clean a porcelain urn from the yard, make a round opening a foot above the bottom, insert a handful of sorghum stalks that had been tied up, and then put a plate of fermented vinegar embryos from the porcelain urn. Put them into porcelain urns one by one. I like to hear the sound of vinegar falling bit by bit from the porcelain urn into the basin below. Sometimes when my mother is not around, I can’t help but take a spoonful and drink it. The sour taste is really beautiful. .
The vinegar brewed in this way cannot be called mature vinegar. It can only be called mature vinegar after being evaporated by three volts and frozen by three colds. Generally speaking, aged vinegar is the same as aged Fenjiu. The longer it is aged, the more mellow its flavor will be. I remember that when we attended the Shanxi Mature Vinegar International Exhibition in 2012, we bought a bottle of 20-year-old mature vinegar and made a special meal of dumplings when we got home. The rich and mellow taste was truly unforgettable.
Ever since I went to university in the north and moved south to work after graduation, I have rarely been able to eat authentic Shanxi mature vinegar. Sometimes I really can't bear it anymore, so I ask my family to send some. I keep thinking that the cooking techniques of Shanxi mature vinegar have long been known to the world, so why is the mature vinegar produced only in Shanxi so intoxicating? Now I understand that the key factor lies in the soil and water of Shanxi. In fact, only in the unique land of Shanxi can this kind of aged vinegar with a ten-mile fragrance that invites people be brewed.