Hua Diao - the Most Famous Shaoxing Yellow Wine

Huadiao wine is a traditional Chinese yellow wine. Among the various Huadiao wines in China, the Shaoxing Hua Diao is the best and most famous. The glutinous rice and yeast of high quality is used to make the wine. Its taste is soft, and the color is orange and clear. The longer the storage time, the better the quality. It contains a variety of amino acids, proteins, inorganic salts and vitamins that are beneficial to the human body.
 

In the past, people from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces often brew yellow wine at home and send it to others as a present. But the ordinary wine jars were not fine enough, so they carved some dragons, phoenixes, flowers, fish, birds and other patterns on the wine jars, hence the name, literally meaning “flowery patterns carved”.
 

Put a few plums in Hua Diao that is stored for over 10 years, boil it for about 10 minutes and then cool it to room temperature, 10-15 °C is the best. Then chill it in the refrigerator. You can also put in some ice. Be aware not to drink too fast and you can better enjoy its flavor when you drink slowly. 
 

Add ginger strips and wolfberry into the wine and warm them to about 45 °C. You can also put the eggs into the wine. Drink slowly and your body will be warmed.
 

Shaoxing Huadiao Wine is rich in protein and amino acids. The protein per liter of Shaoxing rice wine is 16g, which is four times that of beer. Moreover, the protein in it is degraded by microbial enzymes and is easily absorbed by the body. The eight essential amino acids the human body needs can also be found in rice wine. Hua Diao wine contains 6770.9 mg amino acids every liter, among them are 2550mg of 8 types of amino acids that human body cannot synthesize itself, which is 11 times that of beer and 12 times that of liquor.

Besides, there are 18 kinds of inorganic salts detected in rice wine, including calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus and other macro elements and trace elements such as iron, copper, zinc and selenium. Adults need about 12.5 mg of zinc per day, and drinking yellow wine can supplement the body’s zinc requirements.
 

Huadiao wine has obvious conditioning effects on women’s irregular menstruation and short menstrual period. In addition, in the clinical treatment of female gynecological diseases in Chinese medicine, Hua Diao is often used as guiding drug to make medicinal effects of other Chinese herbal medicines be better played.
 Hua Diao wine is a kind of warm wine. Drink it after being heated can enhance its ability to repel cold and promote blood circulation in the body, especially in the cold winter. In addition, when people cook some cold food in Chinese medicine, they can add Huadiao wine to make their coldness weaker and decrease their harm to human body.
 

Huadiao wine can also delay aging. This wine is rich in vitamins and it also contains some flavonoids and phenolic compounds and a lot of active enzymes. These substances can not only enhance the activity of human tissue cells, but also the body’s antioxidant capacity. It accelerates the metabolism of lipids in the body, which can reduce the damage of these oxidation products on human cells and delay senescence.
 

In the past, when people in Shaoxing gave birth to babies, they would bury a jar of Shaoxing wine in their yards. If a baby boy was born, parents would hope their son to be well-educated and win the champion in the imperial examination, called Zhuang Yuan in Chinese, when they would take out the wine to serve relatives and friends to celebrate. So the Hua Diao wine buried for sons got the name Zhung Yuan Hong. Having said that, there were hardly ones who can really won the exam. Therefore, Zhung Yuan Hong was generally taken out to serve guests on the son’s wedding ceremony. The Hua Diao wine buried for the baby girl was called Nu Er Hong; it was also dug out to serve guests on the girl’s wedding.

 Read more: Ranking List of 4 Best Shaoxing Wines - Have You Ever Tried?