Baijiu is the most popular spirit in the world by volume. According to the International Wine and Spirits Record, “In 2018, more baijiu was consumed in China than the collective amount of whiskey, vodka and rum consumed worldwide.” So, uh, that's a lot.
Naturally, you wouldn't know it here in the US, where we can't be bothered to give a shit about it. As the world shrinks, geographic distance and a lack of familiarity becomes less of an impediment to any particular ethnic food or drink item becoming the next household word. You'd think after hearing about the sheer production numbers that baijiu would inevitably be the next domino to fall.
Me? I'd read about baijiu for maybe the sixth time as I fell down a rabbit hole of spirits websites and decided I wanted to associate a taste with the category. One wholly unexpected favor later, and I had a sample pack of three different baijius on my desk.
Gathering Intel
The first thing I did was call my friend Mark, as his family is Chinese and I figured if anyone had any firsthand experience with this stuff, it'd be him. At first, he had no idea what baijiu was, but a Google search later I heard nervous laughter over the phone.
“You know, I do know this stuff,” Mark said. “My Taiwanese father in law brings it down off the shelf when all of his friends want to get rowdy. They drink this, play mahjong, and after about a half hour everyone's talking loud and slapping each other on the back. It's fire water, basically.”
“So set my expectations low, is what you're saying.”
“You almost always drink this stuff with food,” Mark explained. “You throw it back and try not to think about it too much.” Here, he paused, searching for the right words. “If you're hoping to have some ascendant experience where you sit down and tease flavors out of baijiu... it isn't that.”
Let no one say I wasn't duly warned. The burning question is whether Mark was right. Is there definition and nuance, or is this stuff just higher-proof Chinese vodka in a different package?
What the hell is it, though?
Never underestimate how all roads of human development somehow lead to creating something that gets you drunk based on what you have access to.
More like Sorg-yum! Am I right?
There are two basic elements that differentiate baijiu from most other spirits. First: the base grain isn't potato, barley, or wheat, but rice and/or sorghum. Secondly, and while there's significantly more nuance to the production process, baijiu relies on a “solid state” fermentation whereby the wet rice or sorghum is allowed to ferment, but it isn't thrown into a big 'ol vat into something that resembles beer before it's distilled down. Instead, a bunch of yogurt-like bricks are put into the still and the heat is cranked so the alcohol vaporizes. (Doubtless, I'm probably omitting something important, but those more interested than I am are welcome to check my math.)
…And then you just throw the liquid in some
pottery and cross your fingers.
As a result, you end up with a clear spirit that is put into terra cotta jars to oxidize, which is intended to eliminate the harshness of young spirit in more or less the same way that barrel aging aims to accomplish. After however many years you feel like waiting: voila! Baijiu.
The four major categories of Baijiu are broken down into light, heavy, rice, and sauce. If this seems somewhat impenetrable, you're not alone. In fact, the branches of the Baijiu family are eerily reminiscent of the “Five Tastes Chicken” my friend Sarah would order from a Chinese restaurant up in Berkeley. The five tastes? Sweet, sour, salty (definitely tastes!), then crunchy (a questionable addition), and finally, chicken.
Of the existing baijiu styles, I was able to try the light aroma, the sauce aroma, and something called “layered aroma,” which I imagined would split the difference between the first two. How were they? Well...
Light Aroma
If there's a Baijiu I think had the best chance of catching on stateside, I'm pretty sure it's this one. While Mark had prepared me to expect a smack upside the head courtesy of foreign rotgut, I was instantly relieved to find character here. This isn't just Chinese Vodka.
Although “light” Baijiu is certainly not light
in terms of distinctiveness.
The light aroma is unexpectedly and surprisingly fruity. There's lychee and mango intermixed with teriyaki pineapple. Taste-wise, it's light for sure, but there's a nice development from a faint cinnamon flavor into cherry and salted plum. That fruitiness from the nose comes through in the form of mango, along with a little earth.
Finish-wise, the spirit vacillates between real fruit and fake fruit. There's quite a bit of the vibrancy carried forward from the front half of the drinking experience, but there's also a gummy “froot roll up” taste that fights to come front and center.
Sauce Aroma
So, by “sauce,” they mean soy sauce. This sounds a little disgusting at first, but remember the “bacon manhattan” phase everyone went through in the early 2010s and suddenly the desire to pair booze with umami flavors becomes a little less alien.
At least in concept. The sauce aroma baijiu is 100% the weirdest spirit I have had in some time, and is the ultimate representation of the kind of shade that adventurous Americans have so far thrown at the spirit category as a whole.
The “sauce” aroma is not muted. In fact, others have described it as smelling and tasting like a bag of sweaty gym socks. There are some intriguing savory smells like Hoisin glaze, but if you step away from the glass and come back a few minutes later it will sock you in the nose with the smell of body odor. If any spirit were to emit Pepe LePew-like stink lines, it would be sauce aroma baijiu.
If you could drink this picture, that’s about what Sauce Aroma baijiu tastes like.
Incidentally, I've heard cops describe the smell of fear as being strangely pungent and metallic. I think I have a frame of reference for that now.
All of this is to say that sauce aroma Baijiu tastes weird. Not as bad as you'd think from the aroma, but weird. It's sweet-and-salty at first, but then it turns almost immediately rubbery before coming back to meaty, umami tastes like mushroom, hamburger, and sesame oil. The finish is all earth. More than anything I've ever tasted. It's a ride.
Layered Aroma
This is almost a holiday after battling through the sauce aroma. The nose takes the light aroma a step further, and is even more tropical with papaya and guava—all of this minus, quite thankfully, the musty, thick sweatiness of the sauce aroma baijiu.
I’ll take weird fruit over just-plain-weird any day of the week.
The actual taste is fruity and juicy, thankfully, but it's also a little plastic heavy that kind of reminds me of petroleum jelly. What I mean by this is that as a little kid I ate a whole tube of my cousin's Chap Stik, and the layered aroma baijiu took me back to that exact sense memory. Imagine chewing on a surgical glove someone stuffed full of fruit.
The layered aroma ends unexpectedly. Like all of the rest of the bunch, it's alluringly weird. It's herbaceous with cilantro, basil, and that baijiu earthiness I suppose is a hallmark of the spirit as a whole. And it's very long and lingering. Is this how menthol cigarettes are? Minty, but kind of dirty and acrid?
The winner! (?)
All in all, I'd say I enjoyed the layered aroma the most. It's rich and intriguing, and its faults are at least unusual enough that I can chalk it up to being someone's acquired taste. Maybe even mine if I were surrounded by Chinese drinking buddies who continually poured this for me when I came to visit.
Do I think Baijiu has a shot of catching on over here? Uh. No. If Mezcal has been facing an uphill fight and craft rums are still trying to gain a foothold in the market, this stuff is too much, too fast, too weird, and a bridge too far. This is not going to be the next cross-cultural gustatory blockbuster, set to enter the cosmopolitan vocabulary alongside sushi, pho, or sriracha. I’d love to be wrong on this.
But should you try it? Yeah. I'd say so.
Strange as baijiu is, I can imagine a world (or a country, more accurately) where people have overcome the initial oddness of it all and can drink it to find nuance. Like many things that don't outright kill you, it will lead to a good story, especially when consumed among friends. If part of why you enjoy spirits is to further refine your palate and suss out new and interesting flavors, then boy howdy: drinking this stuff is jumping into the deep end of the pool.
