A brief introduction to the folklore of the origin of wine

Wine appeared before words, so there is no written record about the origin of wine. The original wine was called "ape wine". Apes will store leftovers in caves after eating wild fruits. When the peel decays, wild yeast naturally ferments the sugar in the fruit to form wine pulp.

Ape wine

The main method of brewing wine in primitive society is to brew water wine with fermented grains. At that time, wine was a drink with great magic in the eyes of ancestors. China is the first country in the world to use Qu to make wine, not later than 200 BC. China began to use grains as raw materials for wine making a long time ago. Fayuan Zhu Lin said: "Those who take whole grains as wine are wooden drinkers, or those who take roots, leaves, fruits and various seeds, fruits and grasses as wine".

Ancient winemaking

The invention of wine has a long history in China. China is one of the earliest countries in the world, and has made great contributions to the development of world wine-making technology. There are many legends about the origin of Chinese wine. Our ancestors created wine, but at the same time they left a series of fascinating and beautiful legends to future generations. "Heaven Brewing", "Ape Brewing", "Yidi Brewing", "Huangdi Brewing" and "Du Kang Brewing" have been passed down to this day.

Du Kang makes wine.

Tiandao winemaking theory

"There are wine stars in the sky, and wine is made, which is in harmony with heaven and earth." Since ancient times, our ancestors have said that wine is brewed by the "wine star" in the sky. There are many ancient books in our country that record this myth and legend. The book Zhou Li more than 3,000 years ago described in detail the existence of the "wine flag star" in the sky. Astronomers in ancient China created the saying of "Twenty-eight Hostels", which began in Yin Dynasty and stood in Zhou Dynasty. Regarding the statement of "wine flag constellation", it is recorded in the Book of Jin: "Xuanyuan has a three-star wine flag in the right corner, and the wine official flag is also the main banquet." Xuanyuan, known as China in ancient times, has *** 17 stars, of which 12 belongs to Leo. The three stars of the wine flag are arranged in a "one" shape, and there are 28 hotels on the south side next to the eight stars in Liu Su. On a clear night, if we carefully search the sky against the star map, we can find that Xuanyuan XIV in Leo and Xingyi in Ophiuchus are very bright and easy to find, while Samsung, the wine flag, is difficult to identify with the naked eye because of its too small brightness or too far away.

Heaven makes wine.

In the history of China literature, there are also poems about wine made in heaven. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Kong Rong, who boasted that "the wine in the bottle is not empty", said in "On Prohibition with Cao Cao" that "the sky is full of wine and the land is Jiuquan County"; Li Bai, known as the "Poet Fairy", wrote in Drinking the Bright Moon Alone; Secondly, there is a sentence in the poem "If heaven doesn't love wine, the wine star is not in heaven"; Li He, a poet known as "genius", also has a poem "Lead the way to pour wine and invite wine stars" in the poem "Drinking by the King of Qin". In addition, words such as "I love Li Taibai, I am the soul of a wine star", "Jiuquan doesn't look at the grave", "I envy the glory of the wine flag", "I intend to raise the wine flag to the image of the Yuan Dynasty" and "I was imprisoned by a wine star in Tian Yue" all contain words such as "wine star" or "wine flag". In the Classic of Wine written by Dou Ping, there is also a saying that wine is made by a wine star, which means that since ancient times, our ancestors have said that wine is made by a wine star in the sky. However, even the author of "Wine Spectrum" himself does not believe such a legend.

Du Kang makes wine.

Many legends left by the ancients to future generations show that our ancestors began to make wine in the era of the Yellow Emperor. At that time, Huangdi, the ancestor of the Chinese nation, invented the "Law of Jiuquan" and had the theory of "soup and wine mash". Therefore, later generations also revered him as the founder of wine. Confucius, written by the Western Han people, has the phrase "Yao drinks a thousand glasses of wine". In the Tang Dynasty, Lu Guimeng also made up a story that Shun's father, Gu Sou, had harmed Shun with wine. Huangdi Neijing written in Han Dynasty; Su Wen recorded the wine-making scene discussed by Huangdi and Zeebe, and Huangdi Neijing also mentioned an ancient wine-fermented cheese, that is, sweet wine made from animal milk. Obviously, they think that wine was not invented by Du Kang and Yidi, but earlier. It is said that Shennong Materia Medica has described the taste of wine, that is, wine has been invented in Shennong era. The Yellow Emperor is the ancestor of the Chinese nation and the embodiment of the wisdom of the Chinese nation. There may be many inventions and many beautiful legends in the period of the Yellow Emperor.

Emperor Yan and Huang

Although these legends are different, they generally show that wine-making existed as early as the Xia Dynasty or earlier, and it is credible, which has been confirmed by archaeology. It is a miracle that our ancestors were able to observe these not-so-bright "Nine Seven Stars" in the vast starry sky of Hanzhong at that time, and left various records about the Nine Seven Stars. As for why it was named "Seven Lines of Wine" and regarded as the "main banquet", it not only showed that our ancestors had rich imagination, but also proved that wine really occupied a very important position in social activities and daily life at that time. However, wine is a theory made in heaven, which is neither logical nor scientific. This is the attached theory, and it is only a literary exaggeration.

Beer maker