World acquires a taste for Chinese spirit
Cocktail bars put fiery liquor to the test as demand grows for drinks with difference
Drinks columnist Douglas Blyde first came across baijiu when he was presented an intriguingly squat bottle with a red ribbon tied around its neck in a shopping mall in China’s Inner Mongolia.
Since then, he has become a fan of the fiery Chinese spirit — the most widely drunk alcohol in the world, despite being very little known beyond the borders of China.
Baijiu, usually distilled from sorghum and rice, contains 40 percent to 60 percent alcohol by volume. With more than 5,000 years of heritage, it is a mainstay at every special occasion in China, from Spring Festival dinners and wedding treats to business banquets.
Around 5.5 billion liters (1.5 billion gallons) of baijiu was consumed in 2016, according to London-based consultancy Euromonitor International.
“I tend to enjoy baijiu neat, as it often has an indefatigable, flamboyant, exotic essence, which brings excitement to the table,” said Blyde, who writes a column for London Evening Standard. He also advises sipping, not shooting, quality baijiu.
Baijiu is far from taking over the bar, but in recent years, baijiu cocktails have begun to appear on menus across London, from the Yauatcha in Soho to the Arbitrager in the City to the Mei Ume bar in the Four Seasons.
“When we first started selling baijiu cocktails around 2010/11, we were pretty unique,” said Paul Mathew, owner of the Arbitrager and the Hide cocktail bars in London. “Things are definitely moving on, as lots of high-end bars are using baijiu in their drinks.”
For the past few years, bars across London have been celebrating China’s spirit with special drinks and menus for a “Baijiu Cocktail Week”.
Sarah Lewis, one of the founders of Baijiu Cocktail Week, said the spirit has grown in popularity as drinkers look for something new and different. “They love the history, the unusual taste, and the design of the bottles,” she said.
The first Baijiu Cocktail Week was launched in 2014 to raise awareness of the drink. In 2018, the week will coincide with the lunar Chinese New Year, which falls on Feb 16.
Aiming to give further exposure to this spirit, World Baijiu Day was launched in 2015 by Jim Boyce, who has run the night life blog Beijing Boyce and the wine blog Grape Wall of China for nearly a decade, and has written about China’s wine industry for both trade and mainstream publications.
On Baijiu Day, innovative bars all over the world do something creative with baijiu so it becomes better known internationally. The informal theme is “beyond ganbei (bottoms up)” and participating venues in more than 20 cities have embraced it by offering everything from cocktails, infusions and liqueurs to baijiu-inspired pizzas, beer and ice cream, as well as flights and food pairings.
As different categories of baijiu present different challenges, bartenders are required to think carefully about what flavors work well and what characteristics they want to draw out or hide.
One of those challenges: the strong aroma of baijiu, which is an acquired taste.
“I like using these with things like pomelo, strong teas, pear or smoky flavors,” said Mathew, who recently took part in a baijiu seminar panel at the world’s biggest International cocktail festival in New Orleans.
Eder de Oliveira Fonseca Neto, head of bar at Hakkasan Group, has been creating baijiu cocktails since 2015. His bar sells around 15 to 20 baijiu cocktails a day, priced at 12.50 pounds ($16) each.
“Baijiu cocktails tend to be fruity and earthy, whilst the majority of traditional cocktails would be one or the other,” he said.
Neto said the distinctive character of baijiu adds a complexity to drinks when mixed well. “Bartenders are constantly searching for new products to take their drinks to the next level and baijiu certainly does the job,” he said.
The growing popularity of baijiu cocktails is not limited to London. New York venues now regularly serving baijiu cocktails include the Mission Chinese Food, Red Farm, the Peninsula Hotel and the Park Hyatt Hotel.
Sam Anderson, beverage director at Mission Chinese Food at 171 East Broadway, said the key to making a good baijiu cocktail is to mix it with equally strong flavors.
“If you do a baijiu cocktail with St. Germain,” Anderson said, referring to a liqueur flavored with elderflowers, “the St. Germain will get blown out of the water!”
Baijiu’s growth abroad is in line with the increasing appreciation and understanding of China globally, Mathew said.
“Bartenders are becoming more educated and adventurous,’’ he said. “They are increasingly looking to Asia for flavors and ingredients. We had bartenders from all over the world at a cocktail festival asking about mixing baijiu, production techniques and which brands to buy for the cocktails.”
Some non-Chinese are wary about baijiu after being encouraged to drink it by friends or co-workers in China, where persuading people to drink is more a gesture of generosity and being a good host.
“Many (foreigners) find baijiu off-putting,” said Bill Isler, co-founder of Beijing’s Capital Spirits, the world’s first baijiuthemed bar. “But it’s not about the liquor itself.’’
In China, baijiu drinking is a hugely important part of the ritual of dining and cementing relationships. Sharing a bottle around the meal table is as much symbolic as it is for the consumption of alcohol.
But Mathew said there’s a competitive element of baijiu drinking in China.
“I’ve experienced it being the Westerner around a dining table and everybody wants to toast you,” he said. “It is a bit of a knife fight — there’s an interesting dynamic as to who toasts who and how it goes around the table.”
Despite its growing popularity outside China, there is still a long way to go in making the drink commonplace, especially as there is a lack of information to help foreign drinkers understand what makes a good baijiu.
Michal Maziarz, head bartender at Mei Ume restaurant at London’s Four Seasons Hotel, said the biggest challenge is clearly navigation as there is little knowledge about baijiu — how to recognize the different varieties or understand how the flavors have been created. He said to start with, it is important for chefs or bartenders to understand things and then they can educate others.
“Using baijiu in small doses is a good way to make baijiu not being hated on their first date and to make people learn how to appreciate it,” Maziarz said, “It’s little small doses sneaked in between those overripe fruits or other flavors that make it quite interesting and approachable before exposing a shot itself as a soul spirit — I think this transition of making this very slow introduction would do the trick.”
Maziarz suggested promoting baijiu in Western markets by standardizing the flavor. One way would be to invite Western spirit experts or sommeliers to create a panel where they could discuss the flavor and categorize baijiu, he said.
In China, baijiu is also being subject to experimentation. Seminars are being held on how to pair it with food and some entrepreneurs have developed baijiu-infused ice cream, pizza and gummy bears. A chef in Beijing even created deep-fried baijiu cake.
The government is also making great efforts to promote baijiu tourism, a Chinese version of a Bordeaux tour in Maotai, Guizhou province, where China’s top-notch baijiu — Moutai — is produced.
Baijiu-producing companies are keen to enter Western markets. The State-owned Kweichow Moutai Company has launched its Moutai brand promotion in Hamburg, Germany. Sichuan Swellfun, a baijiu maker in Chengdu, sold a stake to Diageo in 2013.
“It would be great to see brands partnering with spirit distributors who specialize in bars,” said Mathew, who said sourcing baijiu easily at a right price can be difficult.
“A lot of baijiu marketing in China surrounds the aura of the brand without giving too much detail,’’ he added. “But here, bartenders and an increasingly educated spirits consumer want to know about the raw materials, fermentation process, stills and aging.”
Zhang Yangfei contributed to this story.