Chinese Alcoholic Beverages

Chinese Alcoholic Beverages

Jiu (Chinese: 酒; pinyin: jiǔ) is the Chinese as a single word (or as part of a compound word) refers to a drink or beverage containing ethanol. Jiu has in some cases been mistranslated into English as "wine", as this use of "wine" may imply not only a non-fortified beverage produced by fermenting grape juice; but also, jiu may (and more generally does) refer to "alcoholic beverages" or "distilled beverage" (liquor) in general, including versions of Chinese alcoholic beverages directly produced by the fermentation of various non-grape substances, distilled beverages from grape or non-grape substances, or fortified alcoholic beverages, any of which may have been produced primarily from grains, legumes, fruits, or sometimes other types of ingredients, with or without the addition of other specific ingredients (some of which being considered tonic or medicinal). The same Chinese character (酒) is also used in Japanese writing of the Kanji form, where it is pronounced sake or shu, and in Korean writing of the older Hanja form, where it is pronounced "ju." Modern governmental regulatory standards may render these otherwise shared terms less than synonymous.