Cherries In Nu Er Hong and Kuei Hua Chen Wine Cocktail Jelly

Cassia wine, osmanthus wine, or Kuei Hua Chen Chiew is an alcoholic Chinese drink, sometimes sweetened, produced from weak

baijiu ''Baijiu'' (), also known as ''shaojiu'' (/), is a colorless Chinese liquor typically coming in between 35% and 60% alcohol by volume (ABV). Each type of baijiu uses its own type of ''qū'' for fermentation to create a distinct and charact ...

and flavored with

sweet osmanthus ''Osmanthus fragrans'' (lit. "fragrant osmanthus"; Chinese: , ''guìhuā'', and , ''mùxī''; ; Shanghainese: ''kue35 ho53''; ja, 木犀, ''mokusei''; hi, , ''silang''), variously known as sweet osmanthus, sweet olive, tea olive, and fr ...

flowers. It is distilled, but typically has an

alcohol content Alcohol by volume (abbreviated as ABV, abv, or alc/vol) is a standard measure of how much alcohol (ethanol) is contained in a given volume of an alcoholic beverage (expressed as a volume percent). It is defined as the number of millilitres (mL) o ...

less than 20%. While the plant itself is sometimes associated with cinnamon,Small, Ernest. ''Top 100 Food Plants''
p. 179
NRC Research Press (Ottawa), 2009. Accessed 8 November 2013. the blossoms'

lactone Lactones are cyclic carboxylic esters, containing a 1-oxacycloalkan-2-one structure (), or analogues having unsaturation or heteroatoms replacing one or more carbon atoms of the ring. Lactones are formed by intramolecular esterification of the co ...

s impart a flavor closer to apricots and

peach The peach (''Prunus persica'') is a deciduous tree first domesticated and cultivated in Zhejiang province of Eastern China. It bears edible juicy fruits with various characteristics, most called peaches and others (the glossy-skinned, non-f ...

es. Owing to the time at which

Osmanthus fragrans ''Osmanthus fragrans'' (lit. "fragrant osmanthus"; Chinese: , ''guìhuā'', and , ''mùxī''; ; Shanghainese: ''kue35 ho53''; ja, 木犀, ''mokusei''; hi, , ''silang''), variously known as sweet osmanthus, sweet olive, tea olive, and fr ...

flowers, 'cassia' wine is the traditional choice for the "reunion wine" drunk on the Mid-Autumn or

Mooncake Festival The Mid-Autumn Festival (Chinese: / ), also known as the Moon Festival or Mooncake Festival, is a traditional festival celebrated in Chinese culture. Similar holidays are celebrated in Japan (), Korea (), Vietnam (), and other countries in Ea ...

. From the homophony between and (meaning "long" in the sense of time passing), cassia wine is also a traditional gift for birthdays in China. It is also considered a medicinal wine in

traditional Chinese medicine Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. It has been described as "fraught with pseudoscience", with the majority of its treatments having no logical mechanism of acti ...

Li Shizhen Li Shizhen (July 3, 1518 – 1593), courtesy name Dongbi, was a Chinese acupuncturist, herbalist, naturalist, pharmacologist, physician, and writer of the Ming dynasty. He is the author of a 27-year work, found in the ''Compendium o ...

's ''Compendium of'' Materia Medica credits sweet osmanthus with "curing the hundred diseases" and "raising the spirit". Within China, cassia wine is associated with

Xi'an Xi'an ( , ; ; Chinese: ), frequently spelled as Xian and also known by other names, is the capital of Shaanxi Province. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong Plain, the city is the third most populous city in Western China, after Chongqi ...

and

Guizhou Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to the ...

, but production now occurs throughout China, including

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

and at the Hong Jiang Winery in

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi ...

.''Zhonghua Mei Jiu'', p. 408. 中国轻工业出版社, China. 食品工业局. 轻工业出版社, 1985. Accessed 8 November 2013. Despite the name, the Chinese cassia tree (

Cinnamomum cassia ''Cinnamomum cassia'', called Chinese cassia or Chinese cinnamon, is an evergreen tree originating in southern China, and widely cultivated there and elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia (India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam) ...

) is not used to flavor cassia wine. References to the osmanthus in Chinese literature and poetry are often translated as "cassia" because both trees were formerly known in China as (Modern Standard Mandarin: ''guì'').

In popular culture

The drink is referenced many times in the game

Genshin Impact ''Genshin Impact'' is an action role-playing game developed and published by miHoYo. It was released for Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, and Windows in 2020, on PlayStation 5 in 2021, and is set for release on Nintendo Switch. The game feature ...

as the favourite beverage of the character Zhongli. The wine is also frequently referenced in Chinese period dramas (often referred to as

Xianxia ''Xianxia'' ( zh, s=, t=仙俠), directly translated to 'immortal heroes', is a genre of Chinese fantasy heavily inspired by Taoism and influenced by Chinese mythology, Chan Buddhism, Chinese martial arts, traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese ...

Wuxia ( ), which literally means "martial heroes", is a genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists in ancient China. Although is traditionally a form of historical fiction, its popularity has caused it to be adapted ...

References

{{chinese booze Chinese wine