Chinese alcoholic beverage

Chinese alcoholic beverages
The courtyard of a Chinese vintner, including sealed jars of huangjiu being stored and aged
Chinese
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin jiǔ Yue: Cantonese Jyutping zau2 Southern Min Hokkien POJ chiú

Chinese alcoholic beverages seem to precede the earliest stages of Chinese civilization. They include rice and grape wine, beer, and various liquors including baijiu, the most-consumed distilled spirit in the world.

"酒", pinyin: Jiǔ, is the Chinese character referring to any beverage containing appreciable quantities of ethanol. Its Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as *tsuʔ, at which point it was generally applied to drinks made from fermented millet. By the time of the first certain use of distillation during the Jin and Southern Song dynasties, the Middle Chinese pronunciation was tsjuw. It is often translated into English as "wine", which misrepresents its current usage. In present-day Mandarin, jiǔ most commonly refers to pure alcohol, hard liquors, and strong rice wine, while wine and beer are distinguished as pútáojiǔ (葡萄酒, lit. "grape jiu") and píjiǔ (啤酒, "'beer' jiu"), respectively.

Nonetheless, there are many cultural parallels with the use of wine in European culture. Chinese food employs jiǔ in its recipes and formal dining in an analogous manner; likewise, there are many parallels in upper-class etiquette and religious observance. It appears prominently in all of the Chinese classics, including the Rites of Zhou and the Record of Rites, and has been a constant theme of Chinese poetry since its origins, all similar to the treatment of wine in Europe.