Japanese wine culture
Whether you are happy or sad, it is not only the patent of the Japanese to use wine for entertainment or to drown your sorrows. However, since ancient times, the Japanese favorite sake is well deserved.
Sake is made from rice harvested in autumn and fermented in winter. It can be said that "wine is the artistic crystallization of rice, water and wine songs". Therefore, the origin of famous wines must have sufficient water and be rich in rice. Adequate water and high-quality rice are the prerequisites for brewing mellow wine. Japan's forests have given birth to abundant water sources and provided a good environment for the production of high-quality famous wines. The famous wines here are mainly produced in Tohoku, Hokuriku, Jiufukuoka and Kumamoto.
Japanese food is mainly fish and seafood. Eating Japanese food and drinking whiskey is too strong, which destroys the delicacy of Japanese food, and drinking beer is not "good". It is more appropriate to add mellow and refreshing sake to Japanese cuisine. The Japanese later brewed "Yinniang" from the "core" of rice, which was very popular and the highest quality in sake.
Soju sake is very suitable for formal banquets, while soju is more suitable for relaxed and happy occasions. In Kagoshima, if "wine" is mentioned, it goes without saying that it means shochu. The locals love shochu, and most of the toasts are shochu.
The common raw materials of shochu are sweet potato, wheat and buckwheat. But there is another kind of shochu made of sesame, carrots, coffee, sugar cane and so on. The alcohol content of distilled shochu is higher than sake, ranging from 25 degrees to 45 degrees, reaching the same degree as whiskey.
In Okinawa, people
I like to drink a kind of wine called "Paosheng". Like sake, this kind of wine is made of rice, but the black fermentation method is different, which reflects that Ryukyu people have had frequent exchanges with Southeast Asia for a long time and accepted many foreign influences. "Paosheng" is also a distilled liquor like shochu, but there are also spirits with a volume of more than 60 degrees. Ryukyu cuisine is rich in oil. If it is not strong enough, it is really difficult to draw a sword to compete with it. Before World War II, people buried wine in Luzon pots. It's not uncommon for old wines that have been stored for more than 65,438+000 years, but now they have almost disappeared, which is really nostalgic. Whether you are happy or sad, it is not only the patent of the Japanese to use wine for entertainment or to drown your sorrows. However, since ancient times, the Japanese favorite sake is well deserved.
Japanese wine culture
"The drinker is a beauty in heaven" (Hanshu). Food records)
To tell the truth, wine can really be described as "the whole world is drunk together". You can see drunkards everywhere, and the most extreme sentence is probably "God bless drunkards" (The Adventures of Tintin).
The origin of a Japanese wine and brewing technology
The earliest existing Japanese historical record is the "Japanese" part of The Story of the Three Kingdoms-The Japanese Biography in Wei Zhi. There is no particularly detailed first-hand information about the ancient Japanese, but there is a record of "human drinking", and it is pointed out that the Japanese have the custom of gathering people to "sing, dance and drink" at the funeral. But unfortunately, they didn't point out whether they were drinking Wuliangye or Erguotou.
According to the unremitting efforts of great archaeologists, we can know that the Japanese had already started to make wine in the mid-Sovan period (China Spring and Autumn Period) at the latest. A "perforated clay pot" was unearthed in Nagano Prefecture, central Honshu Island, which is the earliest known wine-making apparatus in Japan. In the same place, the seeds of Vitis amurensis were also found. Ah, so the Japanese drank wine (did the French jump out? )。 This at least shows that wine and drinks at that time were still made from wild fruits.
According to the legends and archaeology of most countries and nations, monkeys were the first to master wine-making technology! They pick wild fruits, store them, and when they can't finish eating them, they ferment the remaining fruits into wine. It happened that Jiro in this forest found that his family found Jiro full of nonsense that night and jumped in. My point of view A: Harmony songs and Dunsheng dances are produced in this way ... My point of view B: The founder of Japanese brewing is Nikimaru! Oh, oh, oh, oh, great discovery ...
As for rice wine, which is dominant in Japan today, it was undoubtedly produced after rice culture was spread to Japan. In the late Wensheng period (already in the Warring States period), a large number of farmers in the south of the Yangtze River fled to the islands across the sea to escape the war (at that time, the navigation technology was excellent), so they brought rice planting technology. From Kyushu in the south to Aomori in the north, traces of rice cultivation in this period have been found. Of course, it is not enough to have rice, but also to turn rice into wine. We might as well look for answers from ancient books and some legends.
First of all, the invincible Historical Records records that during Shen Ying's time, there was a Baekje winemaker who needed Xu Li. The emperor drank the wine he offered and found it delicious. "I have never tasted it in my life" (the original text has changed ... after all, I am Japanese ... I don't understand Japanese! ! ! ) Be drunk and make a song! However, this statement is not credible. After all, the residual degree of "ancient books" should be questionable.
Let's look for answers from the people. Among the Dionysus worshipped in Japan, there are foreigners from the mainland. Among them, the most famous is Qin. In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Qin family, known as the descendants of Qin Shihuang, lived in Kyoto. They brought advanced technologies including wine making, and made great contributions to Japan's economic development! So that Emperor Xionglue first set up the "Dazang" organization in charge of finance, and the first chief executive selected it-Qin Jiu Gong! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ There is nothing to say ~ ~ ~ Later, in order to commemorate the merits of their ancestors, the descendants of Qin established the Song Great Society in Lanshan and the Dajiu Temple in Taiqin, which still has incense. Therefore, Qin is also considered as the ancestor of Japanese winemaking.
The Japanese can finally drink their own brewed wine! ! !