Alcoholic drinks in China Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. Professor McGovern explains: “The earliest chemically confirmed alcoholic beverage in the world was discovered at Jiahu in the Yellow River Valley of China (Henan province), ca. 7000-6600 B.C. (Early Neolithic Period). It was an extreme fermented beverage made of wild grapes (the earliest attested use), hawthorn, rice, and honey.” And, Professor McGovern continues: “The Jiahu discovery illustrates how you should never give up hope in finding chemical evidence for a fermented beverage from the Palaeolithic period. Research very often has big surprises in store. You might think,
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