Sorghum, stone pits and the western bank

Jiangji Distillery stands in Jiangjin District and introduced the Jiangxiaobai brand in 2012. It makes a clear spirit from sorghum grown on company-owned farms and water from the Yangtze. The grain is soaked in hot water, steamed and cooled back to room temperature before it goes into the pit. The starter is xiaoqu, a small cake of culture, and the microorganisms in it turn the starch of the grain into sugar. That is the whole of the process on the grain side: water, heat, a starter and time. The rest is the still and the jar.

Fermentation happens in stone pits, a solid-state method inherited from the district's older distilleries, and distillation is modern; ageing, when it happens, is in ceramic jars. The house style is mild aroma at lower strength than conventional baijiu. The company is not small: in 2019 the brand entered the Indian market, and in 2020 it raised about 300 million dollars in a round led by China Renaissance, with Baillie Gifford and China Merchants Bank International among the investors. A county distillery selling light-aroma spirit is a new kind of river trade on the same two inputs.

Beside it stands the older trade. Jiangjin is known for Laobaigan, a strong clear liquor usually near or above 60 proof, well known in the towns of Chongqing and of eastern and southern Sichuan. Baisha, down the bank, is the birthplace of Chongqing's sorghum liquor and the main producing area of the xiaoqu qingxiang style, though a great fire destroyed its brewing base in the 1930s. The district is also one of China's three great citrus regions, the home of the Jincheng orange, and makes Mihuatang from puffed rice and sesame. Sorghum, citrus and rice candy, one bank.