Shaoxing Wine

I'm looking for straight-ahead Shaoxing Wine without salt. Argyle St and Wentworth area have turned up nothing. I can't even find the stuff online. Any ideas

I, too, am interested in a local source for unadulterated xiaoshing. There was a lengthy discussion a couple years back on another board that led to nought. By this I mean that supposedly, in order to procur sufficient quality xiaoshing you had to "know" someone. On the offchance you're looking to cook with Chinese wine, I have had favorable results with sherry(both fino and amontillado). Some say cognac's a decent substitution as well. Of course, as learned from that earlier thread, there are many varities and refinements of Chinese wine from the lowest, industrial grade to that of extremely high quality.

I have found it at Richwell Market. In addition to a little liquor section, they have cheap bottles in the normal aisles that aren't the salted "cooking" variety. They are about $4 for a 750ml+ size bottle, or approximately twice that of the "cooking" wines.

For those curious to explore the items in their liquor section, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's "The Chinese Kitchen" has a decent summary of various types. She too suggests substituting sherry.

rien

Richwell Market
(312) 492-7170
(312) 492-7015
1835 S Canal St
Chicago, IL 60616

Tsej,

Chinese Rice wine is not something of which I typically take note, though in casual observation it seems the best selection of Chinese rice wine , as Rein mentioned, can be found at Richwell Market, followed by Arirang on Lawrence with Mitsuwa having a selection as well.

Here's a link to an old c-h post, started by ReneG on rice wine.

Enjoy,
Gary

Richwell Market
1835 South Canal Street
Chicago, Il 60616
312-226-9611

Arirang Supermarket
4017 W Lawrence Ave
Chicago, IL 60630
773-777-2400

Mitsuwa
100 E. Algonquin Road,
Arlington Hts., IL 60005
847-956-6699
9:00AM - 8:00PM

Rien, G Wiv, thanks for the addresses/link. Those markets are a bit out of my purview, but I'll keep them in mind. Too bad neither Argyle St. environs nor Chinatown carry decent rice wine. As an aside: one of the comments from the aforementioned link suggests that Sam's Wine and Spirits might have a selection of Chinese rice wine. Now, I like Sam's, but the help is abysmal and too often obsequious/arrogant. A few years ago when I was on a kick to find an unadulterated shaoxing, I tried Sam's and I'm still amazed at the dumbfounded look I received at the customer help center. Not only did they not carry shaoxing, they'd never heard of it. I realize even their selection of sake is a sop to trendiness, but in an "international" superstore I expect(ed) a bit more knowledge.

Richwell Market is quite close to chinatown. It's even closer to maxwell street market, so you could make a day of it. It's at 18th St and Canal, approximately.

Here's a map

Oh! kool...

tsej wrote:I'm looking for straight-ahead Shaoxing Wine without salt. Argyle St and Wentworth area have turned up nothing. I can't even find the stuff online. Any ideas

I've bought some I use for cooking at Mayflower (IIRC) - that's the store at the corner of the 'new' Chinatown Square Mall.I don't recall seeing salt listed anywhere on the label, although you may be looking for more premium stuff. In that case the much suggested Richwell market would be better.

Mayflower Food Inc.
2104 South Archer Ave
312-326-7440

Here’s a follow-up to the Chowhound thread from September 2002. I believe it was written a few months later. I thought I posted it but am unable to find it in the Chowhound archives. The following is the old post with a few minor additions.

Previously my last visit to Diho in Westmont was over ten years ago. I used to go with a Chinese friend who liked the crullers and soy milk from the International Mall food court. The liquor I bought at Diho Market a decade ago (see 25 Sep 02 post) was likely Chu Yeh Ching Chiew (see link below), a medicinal brew. It was quite tasty and made me feel much better even though I felt fine to begin with.

A few months ago I got back to International Mall and to Diho. The food court looks remarkably similar though I’m sure some individual stalls have changed ownership. I looked a little more carefully at Diho’s liquor and wine, the best selection I’ve noticed in the Chicago area (I should note my only trips to Richwell Market have been very rushed so I’m not very familiar with their stock). I bought three bottles of wine: two rice wines from Shaoxing and a flavored grape wine from an unknown (to me) area in China. All spellings are taken from the labels.

The grape wine is only labeled Kuei Hua Cheu Chiew, 14% alcohol. I found this stuff to be damn near undrinkable. The traditional version is made from laurel buds but this seemed synthetic, as if concocted from grape juice, alcohol, and cheap perfume. I suspect there may be good versions of this wine but I have to believe this wasn’t one. I managed only two sips over several days then poured it down the drain.

The next was Nu Er Hong, a rice wine brewed by Zhejiang Winery in Shaoxing. It’s 18% and comes in a cool turquoise-glazed spherical bottle, maybe its best feature. This wine was clearly a step above most of what I’ve bought from Argyle groceries but had a slight mustiness, maybe oxidation due to its odd cork and plastic closure. This wine was yellowish-brown but I wonder if it was mostly from caramel rather than from age. Still, an interesting wine to sample.

Gu Yue Long Shan Shaoxing rice wine (aged 8 years) was quite extraordinary, at a completely different level than the others (and what I’ve bought on Argyle). It had a richness and complexity I hadn’t tasted in a rice wine before. Even though it wasn’t particularly sweet, I’d describe it as treacle-like. I didn’t get around to cooking with this but bet it would be interesting to play around with in the kitchen. This wine has so much flavor that I imagine it could overwhelm many dishes. They make at least two other versions, one younger, one older, all in tall squarish bottles with a screw cap. I can’t wait to try the oldest one and to see what other rice wines might be available at Diho. They also carry quite a few distilled liquors including true Mao Tai (quite expensive) and lots of knockoffs. A very interesting selection to explore.

I haven’t found too many good references on Chinese wines and liquors. Here’s a website well worth a look before visiting Diho. Click on each bottle’s picture to get more information. Finally for those interested in the history of Chinese wine (and much more) let me again plug a book RST first mentioned here a while back. Science and Civilisation in China edited by Joseph Needham is the definitive work in the area. Volume 6 is on Biology and Biological Technology and Part V of that is on Fermentations and Food Science by H T Huang. This 740 page book (ISBN 521 65270 7, published by Cambridge U Press in 2000) is beyond amazing but is neither easy reading nor inexpensive.

Diho Market
665 Pasquinelli Dr
Westmont IL
630-323-1668

When I lived/cooked in China (Wuhan, long ago), most people just filled their cooking wine bottles at the local store. It came from a large barrel, fully aerated. That is to say, totally oxidized. When folks used the wine in cooking, that was the flavor they not only expected, it was what they looked for.

Oxidized wine tastes pretty much mostly alike. Hence, sherry, the western oxidized wine par exellence, is a very reasonable substitute.

I use Gallo's dry sherry. It tastes like a high quality version of what everyone in Wuhan cooked with. (Not claiming here that Wuhan cooking is anything to brag about, of course... in fact, it ain't, but it's home cooking for me.)

Technically, "oxidation" in sherry (or any other wine) is termed "maderization", named after what madeira goes through and tastes like.
Which leads me to wonder--I wonder if one could use madeira instead of sherry for Chinese cooking? Probably Antonius has already tried it, and can answer my wondering...

Geo

Geo wrote:...I wonder if one could use madeira instead of sherry for Chinese cooking? Probably Antonius has already tried it, and can answer my wondering...

Geo:

Nope, but it sounds like a reasonable thing to try.

I'd be interested to hear something about the home-style cooking you learned in Wuhan (about which I know nothing) Anything particularly distinctive?

A

FWIW, Jeff Smith, aka the Frugal Gourmet, always used to suggest fino sherry in his Chinese dishes., instead of Shaoxing. Of course, allegedly, he and Michael Jackson (not the beer geek) had something in common.

As I posted above, fino sherry is a common substitute(and works fine). I've also had good results with amontillado.

Antonius,

Wuhan is a funny place. It's somewhere around the 5th largest city in China, but no one knows about it. I spent 6 months in the philosophy dept at Wuhan U., arguably the best philosophy dept in the country, even better than U. Beijing, or so it is claimed! Brilliant grad students, of course.

The city itself is a composite of three towns on different banks of the Yangtze and Han rivers, most importantly the old old Wuchang, and the newer, trade port Hangkou. The U is in Wuchang.

It's a 3-day cruise up the Yangtze from Shanghai in the huge ship (c. 5,000 passengers), and about the same downriver from Chendu. The cuisine rather gets its style from these two influences. But it's a spicier, oily-er Shanghainese, and a milder, oily-er Sichuanese that one finds there. Basically, it's oily-er.

The U sits on the huge 55-sq km lake, simply gorgeous site. There's a freshwater fishery there, and, obviously, on the river as well. So there's a lot of fish and seafood--including eel, which can always be bought live in the market. Most famous is the Steamed Wuchang fish, which, contrarily enough, is frequently braised. Hence the oil.

Equally famous is the Wuhan/Hubei version of shu-mai. It's porkier and decidedly hotter than more well-known versions. Wuhan is a famous dumpling town; there's a place in downtown Hangkou that my students used to take me that's *3* huge stories of nothing but dumpling eaters gobbling gobbling gobbling. Imagine a scene not unlike Münchener Hofbrauhaus c. 0100h on 25 Sept. Walk into the place on a cold Winter's evening and your glasses immediately fog up from the steam, just as your ears fog up from the happy noisy gluttony going on around you. Wonderful!

Dou fu skin 'noodles' are another odd local dish: gray strips of skin peeled off the top of congealing dou fu are used like noodles, with an oily porky sauce. Delicious, but resembling the Platonic Idea of Heaviness.

Tomatoes are an ubiquituous part of the local cuisine. They're small, rich, and extremely flavorful-- Summer in Wuhan is unimagineably awful. 100°F, 90% RH, and not a single waft of breeze. It's called one of the Firey Furnaces of China for very very good reason. But there's your tomato climate.

One of my favorites is the greasy but watery Wuhan scrambled eggs + tomatoes. Man, an eater can just scarf up an immense amount of this stuff. The eggs are tiny little things, coming from maximally free range chickens, existing on a fine buggy diet. You can't believe how good those eggs taste. IF you can break the shell.

Another local speciality is 'peppers with everything.' They've got a pepper there unlike any I've ever seen before or since (and I'm a chilehead, needless to say). It has the overall form of an extremely elongated, midget bell pepper: an inch across, four inches long. Thin-walled. Lovely strong green pepper flavor; but precisely enough heat to get your attention, but not enough to distract you. It's the finest pepper I've ever cooked with. I brought some seeds home, but lost the line during my divorce. I've just *got* to get some more seeds.

Imagine a heap of 70% peppers and 30% pork; or 30% shrimp, etc. And sometimes you'd let the peppers get red, which sweetened them up, but did not diminish either their pepper flavor or heat.

I could go on, but I won't.

Well, maybe I will a bit. One absolutely classic thing was the oil everyone used for cooking. It was a muddy greenish brown; one bought it at the state store, for essentially nothing: every member of the family had an allotment of 1 liter per month--you paid with little tiny chits torn off a sheet of the damn things (they were also used for wheat products, e.g., noodles). Socialist economies run on skinny little pieces of paper.

The oil had a smoke point of about 6°C above freezing. Which means that all the faculty and staff 8-plexes, which I bicycled past every evening at dinner time, were obscured by this brownish, very very characteristically aroma-ed, haze. At the time I chortled, because I'd brought in 3.8 liters of peanut oil from my r & r in Hong Kong.

Damn but don't I miss that smell, nearly 20 yrs gone...

Anyway Antonius, there's some memories of food in a past life. If you want more, I can probably give you some more. But you've got the cherries picked already, with this post.

Zai jian!

Geo
PS. I'm *still* trying to get a mome to comment on your wonderful Oxford excursions... anon, let me hope

Geo:

Many, many thanks for your post. I confess to being among those who were completely unaware of Wuhan, much less the distinctive aspects of its cuisine.

I am in a general way very aware of the fact that 'Chinese cuisine' is a cover term for a multitude of regional cuisines which often differ from the best know of those regional cuisines in very striking ways. But still every once in a while I hear about something regional from China that really surprises me. The prominent use of tomatoes in Wuhan cooking is one such surprise.

I really enjoyed your descriptions of the dumpling orgies. And the smoky oil-smog...

Just curious: any noodle dishes where the noodles are dressed with tomatoes?

Chile peppers, tomatoes, pork, shrimp, dumplings... reminds me of some other cuisine...

Thanks again.
A

Hi Antonius,

Tnx for the nice words--I'm glad you enjoyed the memories! I simply loved being in China, with those wonderful students (who, as one might expect, were very active and very brave during the time of the Student Uprising in '89).

As to your query re: tomatoes and noodles, I can't say that I remember anything of that sort. In fact, noodles were not very popular at all in Wuhan, except for a weird style that showed up at breakfast sometimes.

My most excellent host, Prof. Chen Weihang--a Shanghainese who could really cook up a storm--said that the best noodles in Wuhan came from the kitchen in Waizou Rm. 404, which, nicely enough, was my room!

Geo