THE VIRTUAL WINE MUSEUM | LE MUSÉE VIRTUEL DU VIN

CHINA

​

​

While wine is usually defined as an alcoholic drink produced through the fermentation of grapes grown on cultivated vines, this was not the case in Ancient China. From the Neolithic period (over 3000 years BC), it's known that Chinese people made an alcoholic drink from fermented cereals such as millet and wheat. This beverage was known as jiu. As no exact equivalent for this term exists, it's generally translated as wine, despite not coming from the fermentation of grape juice. This particular practice arrived later – around the 4th century BC – with the introduction of cultivated vines, Vitis vinifera, from central Asia*. The grape-based wine produced from this point onwards is also called jiu, a term used for the many sorts of wine which coexisted for centuries: cereal-, grape- and fruit-based wines together.

​

Among the many US, English, Chinese and French museums whose artworks linked to wine are displayed here, few indicate what type of wine is depicted. When these pieces date from before the 4th century BC, it's almost certainly cereal-based; when they're more recent than this, it's sometimes difficult to know. But really, what does it matter?

​

 

* Via the Silk Road, a network of roads and sea routes used for the transport of goods. These trading routes would dominate East-West exchanges for centuries. The oldest known traces of the Silk Road, used for communication with Western peoples, date back to “at least 2000 BC” (Lucette Boulnois, Les routes de la soie, Sciences humaines, April 2009).

​