Chapter 306 New Industry
Liu Zhiye took a sip, a hint of admiration flashing in his eyes. This wine is indeed extraordinary.

He turned to Liu Yuanhai and asked curiously, "Uncle San, where did you get this wine? It tastes really unique."

Liu Yuanhai smiled proudly, stroked his beard, and said, "This is a good wine that I have treasured for many years, but I have never been willing to drink it. Today, seeing that you are back, I specially took it out to share with you."

"Speaking of this wine, there is a story..."

"It was the early years of the Republic of China. One day, my father went to Nanshanwa to chop wood and found a group of monkeys throwing fruits into a big tree hole..."

It is said that in the early years of the Republic of China, deep in the Nanshanwa of Liujiazhuang, Liu Yuanhai's father Liu Hongshan went to chop firewood as usual.

That day, the sun shone through the treetops and onto his wrinkled face. He swung his axe, chopped off thick firewood, and thought about today's harvest.

Suddenly, the sound of monkeys playing caught his attention. He looked up and saw a group of monkeys busy at the entrance of a big tree. They threw the fruits in their hands into the hole, as if they were holding a mysterious ceremony.

Liu Hongshan approached curiously, wanting to find out what was going on. He hid behind a tree and carefully observed the monkeys.

Some of them were jumping, some were climbing, and some were picking up fruits on the ground and then putting them into the hole one by one.

This scene surprised Liu Hongshan very much. He had never seen such an interesting sight.

Suddenly, a legendary story emerged in his mind. "Could this be the legendary Hou'er wine?" As soon as this thought came out, the alcohol bug in his stomach was completely aroused.

So Liu Hongshan put down his axe and chose to hide here. He waited patiently for the monkeys to leave, eager to find out what was going on.

Monkey wine is said to be made by monkeys in the mountains who pick hundreds of fruits in a cave (usually a tree hole) to store food for the winter.

But if there is no shortage of winter food that season, the monkeys will forget that they have stored a cave of hundreds of fruits, and then the cave of hundreds of fruits will gradually ferment and then be brewed into a cave of hundreds of fruit wine.

As the monkeys gradually moved away, Liu Hongshan quickly walked to the tree hole and observed carefully. As expected, a strong aroma of wine filled his nose, intoxicating him.

Liu Hongshan's eyes flashed with desire. He couldn't wait to lie down and put his head into the cave.

He scooped up a mouthful of sweet fruit wine and drank it all in one gulp. The taste seemed to dispel all his fatigue.

After tasting the monkey wine, you will find that the alcohol content is moderate, which is almost the same as ordinary rice wine. After tasting it carefully, a fruity aroma comes to your nose, which is intoxicating.

Unfortunately, he only had a leather bag for drinking water. After filling it up, he was still reluctant to leave.

So he bent down again and drank greedily, as if he wanted to suck all the wine in the tree hole into his mouth.

This low-alcohol fruit wine had a strong aftereffect that could not be ignored. Liu Hongshan drank too much without realizing it, his eyelids gradually became heavy, and he eventually fell asleep beside the tree.

It didn't matter that he slept for the whole day until night fell. When the monkeys returned, they were surprised and angry to find Liu Hongshan, the uninvited guest.

The monkeys were furious when they found out their home had been robbed. They picked up stones and branches and threw them at Liu Hongshan.

Liu Hongshan was awakened by the pain. He touched the lumps on his head and fled in a panic under the attack of the monkeys.

When he got home, he was very grateful that the monkeys came back in time to wake him up.

Otherwise, if you sleep like this in the mountains for a night, you will either be fed to mosquitoes or eaten by wild beasts.

However, it was not without gain. When he ran back, he did not forget to take the bag of fruit wine with him.

Later, after drinking the monkey wine, Liu Hongshan began to think about the monkey wine in the tree hole.

When he found the big tree hole again, he discovered that it was empty and even the group of active monkeys had disappeared without a trace.

The monkeys' food storage area was accidentally broken into by an outsider named Liu Hongshan. Perhaps it was this disturbance that forced the monkeys to flee in panic.

Liu Jiashan was immediately disappointed, as he had been thinking about stealing the monkey wine again.

However, looking at the tree hole in front of me, the spring water in the cave is still there.

He started to think about it, and the monkeys just had to throw some fruits in there randomly, and over time they would ferment into wine.

If I put some fruits in it, can't it be made into wine?
Liu Hongshan thought about it and actually took action, and he actually succeeded.

Since then, Liu Hongshan's secret place has become his wine-making holy land.

He kept this secret to himself and no one knew it. It was not until Liu Yuanhai grew up that he told him this secret that had been hidden for many years.

Now Liu Yuanhai told Liu Zhiye that for all these years, only the three of them knew about it.

Liu Zhiye nodded slightly. He loved drinking by nature. How could he not know the famous "Monkey Wine".

As for the fact that monkeys love wine, it has long been recorded in historical books.

Gao You, a scholar of the Eastern Han Dynasty, commented under the sentence "The orangutan knows the past but not the future" in the "Fanlun Pian" of the "Huainanzi": "The orangutan... is fond of drinking. When people fight it with wine, it drinks without taking a rest. It does not know that it should be drunk, so it uses its body to harm others."

Li Xian, the Prince of Zhanghuai in the Tang Dynasty, annotated the Book of the Later Han Dynasty. Under the sentence "Ai Lao gave birth to an orangutan" in the Records of the Southwestern Barbarians, he quoted a very vivid story from the Records of the Southern Central Regions:

In this valley, orangutans walk in irregular paths, in groups of hundreds. The locals use wine and dregs to set them on the road. They also like to make sandals, so the locals weave grass into sandals, and connect them together in dozens of pieces. When orangutans in the valley see wine and sandals, they know who set them up, and they also know the name of the ancestor of the person who set them up.

He called his name and cursed, "You want to slap me!" He left him and went away. He left and came back again, calling him to try to taste wine together. At first he tasted a little, then took out his shoes and put them on. If he drank two or three liters, he would be very drunk.

When someone came out to collect it, the shoes were tangled together and it was impossible to remove it, so it was taken back to the inner cell. When someone wanted to take it out, when they got to the cell, they were told, "You orangutans, push the fat one out." They looked at each other and cried.

This story of "The Story of the Orangutan and the Drunkenness" was widely circulated in the Tang Dynasty and later generations, and became a favorite allusion in poems and lyrics by great poets such as Bai Juyi, Li He, Huang Tingjian, and Lu You.

The wild brew of "monkey wine" is just a coincidence, and the real monkey wine is priceless.

This "monkey wine" is made from an empty tree that the monkeys have painstakingly selected, and is then used to store hundreds of fruits.

That must be a tree that can ensure that all fruits survive the winter without rotting. How many trees like this are there? They must be hollow and airtight...

Real monkey wine can only be preserved for one season, and as time goes by, the wine will gradually decrease. It is extremely difficult to get monkey wine!
Moreover, monkey wine is best when it is just beginning to ferment. What gradually drips down is the essence of fermented fruits. It never rots, it just ferments.

But the wine liquid after dripping has a story to tell. The first drops are fruit liquid, and the gathered ones are called fruit wine. When there is no more juice dripping and all the fermented juices are collected and have a wine taste, it can be called monkey wine, or monkey wine.

A flash of inspiration suddenly appeared in Liu Zhiye's mind, and an idea was like a meteor across the night sky, not yet mature but already shining brightly.

He then asked, "Uncle, how many kilograms of sweet fruit wine can be brewed from this tree hole in a season?"

Liu Yuanhai sighed, shook his head, and said in a deep voice: "I understand what you mean, but the annual production of this fruit wine is limited, only a dozen kilograms, not enough even for us to drink."

When Liu Zhiye heard that the output was too small and not enough to become an industry, he felt a little disappointed.

The reason why "Monkey Wine" is difficult to mass produce is not because of the raw materials. If the problem lies with the raw materials, it is easy to solve.

Liujiazhuang now has a wide variety of fruits and can be called the "Flower and Fruit Garden of Beijing".

However, the unique brewing process and special brewing environment of "Monkey Wine" are the real reasons why it is difficult to scale up.

"It would be great if we could solve the brewing environment problem. Such a tree hole is too hard to find..." Liu Yuanhai sighed.

The speaker has no intention, but the listener has intention.

Liu Zhiye heard this and said, "Look, I just hit a dead end. We can use modern technology to simulate the environment in which monkey wine is formed!"

In fact, people in Beijing have long had the habit of drinking fruit wine. Other regions also have various kinds of fruit wine. Lun drinks fruit wine, which was already there when Shennong picked ginkgo to make wine in ancient times.

Therefore, from the perspective of wine history, fruit wine has a relatively long history.

Even earlier than the history of liquor, the first wine in China was brewed from fruits.

There is a plot in "Journey to the West" where Emperor Taizong of Tang sent Tang Sanzang outside the pass and handed him a glass of wine.

"Your Majesty, drinking is the first taboo for monks. As a human being, I do not drink." Taizong said, "Today's trip is different from other things. This is vegetarian wine. Just drink this cup to show my intention of sending you off." What is vegetarian wine? Because the ancients made a clear distinction between wines: wine brewed from grains was called meat wine, and wine brewed from fruits was called vegetarian wine.

After drinking vegetarian wine, people's emotions are not so intense, just like people who often eat vegetarian food nowadays have different personalities from those who eat meat.

The fruit wine produced in the capital area has always achieved great success.

Many of these famous products have not only been used as royal wines in history, but have also excelled in various modern and contemporary arenas.

For example, the Beijing Yeguangbei Winery after the establishment of New China.

The fruit wine produced by this winery went abroad in 1951 and participated in the Leipzig World Expo, where it received rave reviews.

In addition, there are wineries in Beijing and in the southern suburbs that were established after the founding of the People's Republic of China, all of which produce fruit wine.

These wines include the 30-degree Red Star "Orange Wine", "Green Plum Wine", "Yanbin Wine", "Hawthorn Wine", "Mulberry Wine", "Apple Wine", Shangyi Traditional "Pineapple Wine", Loutou "Robin Honey", Yubei "Banana Wine" and many other varieties.

People in Beijing are the best drinkers of wine. In the Qing Dynasty, there was a saying that "among the hometown of wine, Beijing is the best."

People in Beijing have an innate style. When it comes to wine, they have to "taste" it, which is the same process as interacting with people.

The "strong" taste of the wine when it first enters your mouth, and the "soft" taste after you drink it, only at this time will you be able to taste the flavor, that is, the taste of life.

The most famous liquors in the old capital are Chrysanthemum White, Lotus White and Fu Niang White, which were health-preserving wines exclusively for the royal family to enjoy during the Qing Dynasty.

In the previous dynasty, there were many royal mansions in the suburbs of Beijing, and they also had their own distilled wine. But they were not ordinary commodities, and only the upper class could drink them or give them to each other as gifts.

These wines are not available on the market. Ordinary people can only drink white wines such as "Shaojiu" and "Erguotou", vegetarian wines such as "fruit wine", halal wines, and rice wines such as Shaoxing rice wine.

In addition, there is another common alcoholic beverage, which is beer.

Beer was introduced into China after the Opium War. At that time, people in the old capital jokingly called beer "horse urine."

As early as the beginning of the Republic of China, the first brewery was established in the capital, named Shuanghesheng Brewery. It was the first brewery in the country opened by Chinese people themselves.

Later, in 37, the beer produced by this brewery even won an award at the Panama International Exposition and became an internationally renowned brand of beer.

However, the old Beijing residents had long been averse to beer, and only gradually began to accept it after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Even now, it is only popular among certain groups. Most families don't drink it because they think it is too expensive and not as affordable as liquor.

Ordinary people still like to drink white wine, and making white wine requires grain.

However, there has not been enough food in recent years. How could people be willing to use precious grain to make wine?

So now the price of liquor on the market has increased, causing other types of alcohol to also increase in price.

Taking Moutai as an example, the ex-factory price in 1953 was 1.28 yuan and the retail price was 2.84 yuan.

By 61, the grain harvest was low, resulting in a decrease in liquor production and an increase in liquor prices. The ex-factory price of Moutai liquor of the same specification was 2.05 yuan and the retail price was 4.07 yuan.

Within two years, the price of Moutai increased from more than 4 yuan to more than 8 yuan a bottle. Not long after, it increased from more than 8 yuan a bottle to more than 12 yuan a bottle.

The output of fruit wine is even lower, because the fruit industry generally has not formed a scale due to transportation and deep processing problems in recent years.

As a result, the process of making fruit wine has existed for a long time, but it has always been a niche market, and the main consumer of the market in Beijing is still white wine.

At this time, Liu Zhiye's mind once again emerged with the prosperous scene of Liujiazhuang's fruit planting industry, which was growing in scale.

After annexing neighboring villages, Liujiazhuang's territory suddenly expanded, covering an area of ​​dozens of miles.

However, in this vast territory, mountains occupy the vast majority, and plains are limited to a corner along the Yongding River.

Large-scale agriculture is not an option in this rugged terrain.

Therefore, under the guidance of Liu Zhiye, Liujiazhuang wisely chose to focus on cash crops for development.

They adapted to local conditions, made full use of land resources, and planted cash crops suitable for local climate and soil conditions, injecting new vitality into the village's economic development.

These industries cover a wide range of areas including rice field farming, animal husbandry development, Chinese herbal medicine cultivation, fruit industry cultivation, and precious tree planting.

In Liujiazhuang, the fruit industry is gradually emerging and growing stronger.

However, due to the current traffic conditions, transportation is not convenient. If we rely solely on the local market, one day the supply of fruits will far exceed the demand and the profit will become slim.

Therefore, Liu Zhiye thought long and hard and decided to explore the future development direction for these fruit industries in advance.

Today, the third uncle Liu Yuanhai mentioned "Monkey Wine" as a reminder to him. "Yes, you can use fruit to make wine!"

This will not only effectively solve the sales problems caused by future fruit surpluses, but also alleviate the current supply and demand imbalance of wine products, and inject a new vitality of long-term industrial development into Liujiazhuang.

Liu Zhiye remembers that in 2023, the sales revenue of China's brewing industry will exceed one trillion yuan for the first time, reaching 10802.6 billion yuan, and the revenue and profits of many types of wine will continue to grow year after year.

What does it mean that the wine industry has entered the trillion-dollar category?

This means that the future is another blue ocean industry that is no less than traditional Chinese medicine.

According to the data from the Statistics Bureau of Xia State at that time, Xia State's GDP reached 2023 trillion yuan in 126.06.

According to this calculation, the brewing industry will account for 2023% of GDP in 0.857. The market size, growth rate and scope of influence should not be underestimated.

In Liujiazhuang, with the rise of the brewing industry, it is expected to become another prosperous industry after the construction industry, traditional Chinese medicine industry, food and beverage industry, and breeding and planting industry.

In addition, the fruit industry also has broad prospects for deep processing.

For example, canned foods that were once considered luxury goods and Beijing preserved fruits that are deeply loved by Beijing residents are all examples of deep processing in the fruit industry.

Beijing preserved fruits, also known as Beijing-style candied fruits, are produced in the imperial kitchen.

It adopts the traditional secret recipe of the palace and is refined from fresh fruits. It has a moderate sweet and sour taste, is refreshing and smooth, sweet but not greasy, and has a strong fruity flavor. There are thousands of varieties and hundreds of specifications of various products, mainly including apricot preserves, pear preserves, begonias, etc. It is an absolutely green food.

There are many varieties of preserved fruits in Beijing. According to the habit of old Beijing people, the distinction between preserved fruits and preserved fruits is that those with low water content and no juice are collectively referred to as preserved fruits.

For example: apple preserves, pear preserves, apricot preserves, peach preserves, sand fruit preserves, fragrant fruit preserves, crabapple preserves, jujube preserves (also known as golden candied dates), green plum preserves, red fruit preserves, etc.

These products will not only enrich people's dietary choices, but also inject new vitality into the fruit industry and create more value.

So, Liu Zhiye did not hesitate to describe the grand blueprint in his mind in detail to the third uncle.

Third uncle Liu Yuanhai now listens to Liu Zhiye's words, and all suggestions made by Liu Zhiye are regarded as wise words.

Under the wise guidance of Liu Zhiye, the third uncle Liu Yuanhai acted more decisively and made more accurate decisions.

Now, when Liu Zhiye once again proposed an industrial plan, the third uncle expressed his support without hesitation.

"Zhiye, I fully agree with your proposal," he said concisely, and then continued, "Other things are easy to solve. We have sufficient factories and raw materials on hand."

"The key to making wine is people, mainly technicians who know how to make wine, and we don't have that!"

Liu Zhiye smiled and shook his head, his tone revealing confidence: "Actually, this is not difficult.

We only need to invite experts from state-owned wineries to provide guidance, and at the same time use generous treatment to attract elites from winemaking families to join our team.

On this basis, we should also focus on cultivating our own winemaking talents. With this two-pronged approach, we will surely succeed.”

(End of this chapter)