Alcoholic drinks in China Alcoholic drinks in China Alcoholic drinks in China 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. ("jiǔ") is the Chinese character referring to any drink 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
Cassia wine Cassia wine Cassia wine, osmanthus wine, or Kuei Hua Chen Chiew is an alcoholic Chinese drink, sometimes sweetened, produced from weak baijiu and flavored with sweet osmanthus flowers. It is distilled, but typically has an alcohol content less than 20%. While the plant itself is sometimes associated with cinnamon, the blossoms' lactones impart a flavor closer to apricots and peaches. Owing to the timing of the plant's blossoms, cassia wine is the traditional choice for the "reunion wine" drunk on the Mid-Autumn or Mooncake Festival. From the homophony between and (meaning "long" in the sense of time passing), cassia wine