Chapter 68 Xinhua water wine

In Xinhua in the depths of Dameishan, wine is an indispensable special substance.Because of the existence and production of wine, industries and people connected with wine appeared, and also injected heroism and martial arts spirit into the men of Meishan. At the end of the Xuefeng Mountain in Xinhua, there are ups and downs in the mountains, and the Meishan gully is over the mountains and mountains when you go out.Adult men all have the habit and etiquette of drinking, tasting, and toasting. Whether it is a holiday, or visiting relatives, they need to drink some wine to liven up the atmosphere, otherwise they will be looked down upon by relatives.

Meishan people drink alcohol not for their own happiness or physical indulgence, but to relieve the hard work and physical pain, use wine to heal injuries, store energy, and complete arduous farm work.I have lived in the depths of Damei Mountain for 20 years, in the forests and grasses that rely on the mountains to eat the mountains, I planed my life in the fields and forests, and I will inevitably be tired, crooked, twisted, and injured after working hard.With the presence of booze, everything feels easy to fix.When you are tired, drinking a bowl of wine can reduce fatigue; when you are injured, spit out the mist of wine, which can disinfect swelling, promote blood circulation and remove blood stasis, and the pain will gradually anesthetize and disappear.

The biggest beauty of Meishan wine is that it is the catalyst for the lively activities of the mountain people during festivals and festive days. Everyone gathers together, drinks a bowl of wine, raises a glass, and says a few intimate words while enjoying the wine. The greatest joy in life. Xinhua belongs to the ancient barbaric land of Meishan. It used to be a place where Miao, Yao and Han people lived together. It was isolated from the outside world. The eating habits are primitive and simple. Water and wine are its main drinks, and there are many drinking customs, and it is common practice to persuade and toast.It radiates to Anhua, Shuangfeng, Lengshuijiang, Lianyuan, Loudi, Xinshao, Shaodong, Shaoyang, Ningxiang and other places year by year, becoming the bulk of Huxiang rice wine.

Xinhua Shuijiu is a home-brewed wine that is steamed by itself.I live in a wine-making family surnamed Fang, and I grew up watching my mother steam and brew wine.Xinhua water wine, in fact, should be called Xinhua rice wine more appropriately. It is mainly made of steamed japonica rice or glutinous rice, but after the wine is formed, cold water is mixed with the original wine. It is called water wine in local dialect.The rice wine in the dialect is grain wine, which is fermented from grain and is actually urban liquor. In the ancient Meishan, pure glutinous rice is rarely planted, and the yield is not high, and it is often knocked down when it is mature.Therefore, Meishan used to mainly plant japonica rice with a certain degree of waxiness.Japonica rice is a special kind of upland rice in Meishan. It grows in dry land, has high yield and is resistant to lodging. The rice grains are slender and purplish red.The rice boiled with Japonica rice is ruddy and very attractive.

The mountains of Meishan are very steep. Looking at the sky from the foot of the mountain, there is a line between the mountains. If you look at the larger places, you can use a cooking pot to cover them.For the fields that have been opened up, the mountain people formed bamboo hat mounds, coir raincoat mounds, and shoulder pole mounds of different sizes according to the mountain situation. Small fields cannot even be turned around by cattle, so they can only be plowed by hoes.To grow rice, we can only wait for the water from the sky, that is, the rainwater that is retained when it rains.To preserve the rainwater from the sky, the fields need to have good soil quality, waxy, sticky, and tough, in order to retain the rainwater in spring.The land in Meishan is mostly gravel, and it is difficult to retain rainwater.When rain falls from the sky, it collects in the valleys and valleys, and the slopes, tops, and ridges of the mountains can only wet the soil.

Xinhua water wine is still a major custom in the life of Meishan mountain people.Whoever has a daughter, when the child grows up to be a girl, the parents must learn to grow glutinous rice or japonica rice to prepare for the daughter's marriage and childbirth.There are wedding wine, confinement wine, and three dynasty wine, all of which need good water wine. For steamed glutinous rice wine, choose aged glutinous rice.For glutinous grains that are more than one year old, the windmill has repeatedly selected glutinous grains that are full of grains and have not been infested by moths and rice insects.After drying in the sun, the husks are removed by a rice threshing machine, and the residual rice is sieved to leave intact and smooth rice grains, which are the raw materials for steaming water wine.

Wedding wine is counted by the table, one table and one jar.Both confinement wine and Sanchao wine only need one jar. Parents usually prepare four jars when steaming, and choose the best one for use. Meishan steamed water wine must be divided according to seasons. Peach Blossom Wine is steamed on February 15th Peach Blossom Festival, Dragon Boat Festival is steamed on May 5th Dragon Boat Festival, and Chongyang Wine is steamed on September 9th on Double Ninth Festival. After the month, what is steamed is the Chinese New Year wine.This is related to the temperature. When making wine from glutinous rice, it is necessary to control the temperature. If the temperature is high, it will easily turn into bitter wine, which tastes bitter but has low alcohol content; if the temperature is low, it will easily become sour wine.Some families, when steaming and brewing water wine in the hot summer or in the middle of the year, will take a measure. After entering the altar in summer, put it in a cool place, and in winter, wrap it with a quilt or hide it in the cellar, kitchen, or barn.

Steam brewed wine, soak the selected glutinous rice overnight, take it out after breakfast the next day, and steam it in a large pot.Each altar needs one bucket or two liters of glutinous rice, about forty to fifty catties.Fill the big pot with water, cover the pot with a wooden steamer, make a mat in the steamer, spread the washed brown silk, and spread the soaked glutinous rice on it.Generally, it is steamed with firewood for two hours. The glutinous rice is completely cooked, and the rice grains are not boiled.The steamed glutinous rice is crystal clear and glistening, and the rice grains stick together.Pour it into a large plate, spread out the glutinous rice, and after a day of cooling, the stickiness will disappear.After dinner, clean up.

Grind the wine and medicine into powder, add boiling water, mix well, and sprinkle it on the glutinous rice.Smash all the rice grains as far as possible, and store them in a clean pottery jar.The jars for brewing wine belong to the combination of ceramics. There are enamel inside and outside, but they are pottery. They are about one meter high. .When the temperature is relatively warm, the lid is generally not added, and it is covered with washed gauze and waits for the glutinous rice to ferment. The glutinous rice is fermented with wine and medicine seeds. After about ten days, the glutinous rice in the clay pot will have the smell of wine. It will start to be sweet, greasy, thick, and sticky, sticking to the lips when it enters the mouth.This kind of sweet wine is called Jiu Niang, and the rice grains are hard.Slowly, the wine mother becomes bitter, the strength of the wine increases, and the degree rises.After it becomes bitter completely, the original wine is complete and has a high alcohol content.Add unboiled water, cut open the distiller's grains, crush them, soak for three days, the wine and water merge, the distiller's grains soften, disperse, and float up, and the water and wine begin to form.

With the development of the times and changes in families, many families are thinking of steaming water and wine.However, there will always be some unexpected things, and the steamed water wine is not very ideal.If the wine power is not enough and the distiller's grains are red, add a small amount of white wine to increase the alcohol content and increase the wine power.Gradually, the people of Meishan realized the effect of baijiu on water and wine, and used baijiu in large quantities.When the water wine becomes bitter and the original wine is formed, the mountain people directly replace the water with grain wine, add it to the water wine, cover it, and within ten days, a very good water wine will be formed.This kind of wine is sweet but not bitter, the wine is clear, the alcohol content is extremely high, and the distiller's grains are relatively clean.I once drank this kind of water wine in Dayao Mountain on the border of Guangxi and Hunan, which is called Yaojiu locally.

There are also people who only drink water, gather the remaining distiller's grains, put them into wine jars, seal them and bury them in the ground. After a year, all the distiller's grains will be turned into wine, which is pure and has a high alcohol content.Some concentrate distiller's grains and soak them in grain wine. After three months, the distiller's grains melt, and the wine is orange-yellow and has very good alcoholic power. The people in Meishan often call Xinhua Shuijiu Moutai or Nurhong.Add one or two catties of grain wine to the water wine that has turned bitter, cover the lid, seal the altar with sanhe mud or cement, and bury it in the ground. After three months, the wine will be fine.As a big family, when the girl grows up, it is necessary to prepare wedding wine, that is, daughter red.The steamed raw wine is buried in the ground for three years, and the wine is reddish, full of aroma, and its alcohol strength is no less than that of Maotai and other white wines.When getting married, the mother's family will also give the daughter a pot of daughter's red as a drink during childbirth.As the customs changed over the years, the husband's family brought the daughter-in-law's daughter Hong to treat the first-in-law at the time of marriage.Therefore, when the daughter gets married, her natal family has to rush to prepare the Sanchao wine. Because of the short time, the steamed raw wine is sealed and buried in the cowshed and pigpen. Regardless of season, no one will steal it. In one place, pig urine and cow urine are also irrigated to heat up the fermentation of straw, improve the soaking of distiller's grains, and make wine faster.I once drank cow dung wine in Lanshan County, and the method was similar. The daughter is pregnant, and the mother's family will send high-quality water and wine to the daughter when the daughter is about to give birth.For those who did not have time to deliver drinks, after the daughter gave birth to a baby, the son-in-law would immediately go to the father-in-law's house to announce the good news, and brought back water and wine from the father-in-law's house for his wife to drink. In Meishan, a woman has nothing to eat after giving birth, but there are three things: water wine, brown sugar (tablet sugar), and eggs.Boil water and wine, add brown sugar, women drink it to remove blood stasis and nourish yin, and then eat eggs to nourish the body.In the city, sweet wine is used to make eggs and add sugar, which is also the same reason, but a lot of brown sugar and white sugar are used, and brown sugar is warm and will not get angry, while white sugar and brown sugar get angry. When the in-law's family decides the day of drinking for three dynasties, the mother's family, relatives and friends will come to congratulate in a mighty way, sending chickens, eggs, brown sugar and so on.Especially the natal family will definitely bring a jar of water wine, which is the water wine used for everyone to drink on the Sanchao wine, to express their gratitude.The banquet of the Three Dynasties has a lot of soup, which is also called Yuyi soup, but there are dishes to accompany the wine, so that the drinkers can have a full meal. Meishan's banquet, every moment, has a pair of drinks. The main purpose of peach blossom wine in February is for spring plowing and production. When the spring is warm and the flowers are blooming, the farmers have just left the fields. Although the water has warmed up, it is still rainy and a bit cold.Mountain people drink a bowl of hot wine to naturally dispel the cold and warm their bodies.However, peach blossom wine has another function, and that is for engagement.The girls and boys in Meishan, in the season of warm spring and flowers blooming, start to feel restless. After a period of hibernation, their hearts and accumulated emotions begin to erupt.The matchmaker is also eager to move, visiting the door with oil-paper umbrellas to match suitable people.There are unmarried children in the family, and the parents look forward to the matchmaker to step on the threshold.Meishan's matchmaker, in addition to being able to speak well, also has a mouth that can eat, serving good things, and there is no shortage of wine.The well-matched young men and women will go on a blind date accompanied by their parents. The parents agree that the woman will have a meal at the man's house, and the man will prepare a banquet.Soon after the blind date ends, the men and women will hold an engagement ceremony, and the woman will call all her close relatives to drink the engagement wine. On the Dragon Boat Festival, all men who are engaged must go to their father-in-law's house to mention the festival.Meishan is the red bayberry season, and the rainy season is also the best time for men and women to have a tryst. The blooming flowers have withered, and only the lush and dark green of early summer are left, which catalyzes their love.When a man celebrates festivals at his father-in-law’s house, he also needs to give gifts to his uncles, uncles, aunts, and aunts. When he starts to recognize the relatives of his father-in-law’s family, a polite family will call a gathering of relatives to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival.When everyone gets together, the wine they drink is water wine, which is prepared and steamed in advance.That is to say, the water wine brewed during the rainy season is called Dragon Boat Festival wine. In the second half of the year, after the autumn is clear and the weather cools down, the season of late autumn is the best.During this time, farming began to decrease.Women have time to make wine.It is also the best time of the year to make water wine.Whenever there are elderly people in the family, they will definitely steam and brew water wine on the Double Ninth Festival. When the original wine comes out and the smell gradually becomes cold, the elderly in the family can drink water wine to warm their bodies. In early winter in October, there is no frost yet.The mountain people are rushing to steam and brew New Year's wine.This is also brewing wine in large quantities. At this time, some people carry pottery jars through the streets and alleys, looking for people who steam and brew wine. Some people sell ten or twenty pottery jars.In the houses I am familiar with, the New Year’s wine is steamed and brewed, at least eight or ten altars, and as many as forty-eight altars, filling a house. The Chinese New Year in Meishan is relatively long. When the twelfth lunar month begins, the Chinese New Year begins. After the Lantern Festival of the following year, the longest you can pay homage to the early morning flowers in February is still a New Year visitor. For ordinary families, at the beginning of the twelfth lunar month, they will prepare tofu, vegetables, and slaughter pigs and sheep for the New Year.After killing the Chinese New Year pig, the family's New Year's day officially begins.The weather in Meishan is cold, and there are many rains and snows in the twelfth lunar month. On the premise of eating well, wine is also needed as an embellishment.Going out in the morning, drinking a bowl of hot water and wine, the blood in the whole body is boiling, and the weather is no longer cold. People in Meishan are a bit particular about warming wine in order to drink good water and wine.Charcoal fire is generally used to warm wine. If there is no charcoal fire, the wine is simmered over the fire of firewood.Over the years, the sand pot has been slowly retired, and the enamel cup has taken its place.However, people who drink wine always have a sand jar at home. Although it is not big, it can hold about three bowls of wine, which is convenient for three or four people to drink together.Warm wine in a sand jar does not affect the taste of the wine, and it tastes more refreshing.In the days of the Chinese New Year, the simmering wine jars in the fire pond have never left. Elderly people who drink alcohol are more particular about the dishes that go with alcohol. The four common dishes are cured beef, cured meat, cured fish, and cooked cured pork liver.When the family wants to drink some wine, they will say that they have some good food today.The chef at home knows that when the family wants to drink, he can choose any appetizer, slice it thinly, cut each slice into the size of broad beans, and add more chili powder after frying.Although each piece of cured pork liver and cured fish is relatively large, they are eaten with pity. Take a small bite and stop for a while.When the family drank hot water and wine, tasted delicious dishes, and enjoyed the happy life of the mountain people. The best time to drink water and wine is the Spring Festival.For breakfast on the first day of junior high school, everyone has to drink some wine.Those who can drink at home should drink slowly. The juniors who finish eating first heat up the cold dishes before serving them on the table, and other family members eat until noon.Relatives came, continued to drink, and drank until night without knowing it.There are also people who like to eat fatty meat when drinking, and eat large pieces of meat after drinking in a big bowl. I once heard a joke that a family of three fathers and sons drank together from the morning on the first day of junior high school until two o'clock in the afternoon. After drinking a jar of water and wine, it cost about 50 catties; after eating an elbow, it cost about 10 catties.In my hometown, this is not a joke, but a real story. There are couples who drink a jar of wine. Xinhua's water wine is a favorite of the local people, and it is also a holy thing for those who like to drink.