The Wines of China

Sent to the Western Land by Han-wu Emperor on 138 B.C., Zhang Qian found that “in the neighborhood of Wan people make wine with grapes. The done-well possess stores of up to 10,000 piculs and preserve the wine for scores of years. People drink wine habitually and the horses like to eat lucerne.” The emperor then started planting grapes and lucernes in fertile fields with the seed brought back by the envoy. “As the horses were introduced in great number, more foreign couriers came, and some of them would left the imperial palace and look at the boundless fields of grapes and lucernes.”
In the time of the East Han Dynasty, wine was still precious, which could be proved by the story of a bribery recorded in the Han’s History Sequels. A man named Meng Tuo from Fufeng bought the position of a governor with one dou of wine from the then Premier Zhang Rang.
Though winemaking technique was introduced into China in Han Dynasty, it was restricted within a small area, and it’s believed that grape cultivation no longer existed afterwards, which could be proved by the fact that wine was offered to emperors as contribute from frontiers from time to time. By the time of Tang Dynasty, the central China knew nothing about grapes, and the Tang’s Tai Emperor had to introduce grapes from the West Land. “The Tai Emperor occupied Gaochang and collected Maru grape seeds there to be planted in the Imperial Garden and made wine with the introduced technique. The wine is green, tastes cool and strong, with a flavor of Sihu. It’s the first time Chang'an people knew wine” (The New Book of the South, vol. 3). According to Song Dynasty’s classification book Cefuyuangui, vol. 970, the then Gaochang was 20 km east of present Tulufan, with uncertain sovereignty. By the time of Tang Dynasty, wine was so popular in the hinterland, that it’s mentioned frequently in Tang literature. Wang Han in his Liang’s Poem had “with wine in crystal and fluorescent cup, warriors are reluctant to get on their chargers.” Liu Yuxi, one of the most renowned poets of that period, admitted that “ being a native Shanxi man, I plant this jady fruit. Brewed into delicious wine, I cannot get enough of it.” Other poets sang wine too, and some foreigners in Changan run pubs in which western wine was sold.
Xu Guangqi of Ming Dynasty listed the grape varieties in the then China in his Farming Encyclopaedia: “crystal grapes; purple grape; green grape from Sichuan, just like the green grape from the West, also named hare’s eyes, sweeter than honey, the elite is without seeds; small grape from the West, as tiny as pepper . . . those from Yunnan are as big as dates.”

--Bijou Dreyer