Wuliangye's secrets buried not in vaults, but cellars

An ordinary new cellar might produce no Wuliangye but only ordinary liquor in three years. Even when it passed the three-year new cellar period, the good liquor rate is still not that high. However, aged cellars can guarantee that half of their productions reach the standards for making Wuliangye.

As a workshop director said, the aged cellars and environment completely maintained their original forms. Without these cellars, no good liquor can be made.

According to research, Sichuan is very likely to be the origin of strong aromatic Chinese liquor cellars, and Wuliangye's aged cellars are among these most time-honored.

The unsophisticated Wuliangye cellars are the marks of good Chinese liquor, said workers. The dust on the wooden beams and the mottled walls have borne witness to time and history.

The workers said that Yibin's liquor cellars normally have two parts: the fronts are stores facing the street, and the backward parts are cellars.

The size of cellars follows the width of streets. But the varied sizes do not affect liquor quality, said workers.

Craftsmanship can be found everywhere in Wuliangye's cellar workshops. For example, an old single-wheel mechanism has been restored to have a steel body, but the wheel is still wooden.

Some workers are putting fermented crops into steamers, while some others are fanning them. They told reporters that fanning was not for cooling down but to disperse the harmful atmosphere from the aged cellar. This traditional process has been passed down for generations.