Sweet taste of home

Liu Hongjun's hand-made lao zao, sweet fermented glutinous rice. [Photo by Fan Zhen/China Daily]

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Liu can talk about his trials and failures for hours but one thing he has learned is that it takes more than concentration and accuracy to make good rice wine.

Another important thing is attitude. "You have to care about the people whom you make this for. I think that's why my mom's rice wine tastes so good, because she really puts in the extra effort to make it for her family."

Liu also started to look into the benefits of rice wine. He knew it had health benefits for women because the young mothers in the village would drink it as a tonic.

He later learned that the drink can accelerate blood circulation and metabolism and it contains a lot of sugar, organic acids, oxy acids and vitamins.

With all this nutritional value, Liu wonders why rice wine hasn't made it into the high-end market.

"It's a traditional art. If we don't promote it, we might lose it," Liu says. The rice wine recipe in his family was passed down the generations from his great-grandmother. But his hometown is a small village and people make the wine only for themselves. They have never thought of introducing it to the outside world, although some of them can make much better rice wine than what is on the market.

"I just don't want to lose the taste of my mom's rice wine and I hope more people can enjoy it the way I do."

Liu has named his products "A Lian's rice wine" after his mother. He is aiming to make 6,000 bottles this year, and he bought customized packaging and distributed free samples to customers for advice. He is thinking about renting a workshop and transporting the rice from his hometown to Beijing.

"It's like running a marathon. You know there is a long way ahead. But once you get started, you enjoy it so much that you want to keep going all the way until the end."