Wine culture is one part of the Chinese food and drink culture, which is typical of Chinese folklore.
    There was no wine in ancient China. According to the two books Xi-angyinjiu and Liyun, the water ancient Chinese offered to god was called by later generations Xuanjiu or Mingshui. As to the inventor of wine there are several versions, but the most popular one is that a person called Du Kang made it. Du Kang (or Shaokang) was regarded as the inventor of wine.
    The earliest wine was fruit wine naturally fermented.  The TV pro-gramme "Animal World" once reported that an elephant was drunken after eating the rotten and fermented fruit falling down on the ground. Some drink-ing vessels were found from the sites of the Yangshao Culture of the New Stone Age. During the period of Longshan Culture, fruit wine developed into grain wine. In 1974 two drinking vessels made of copper more than 2,200 years ago during the period of the Warring States were found in King Zhong-shan's tomb of Pingshan, Hebei Province. It was said that the wine from it smelt sweet. According to technical analysis it was proved to be twice fer-mented liquor.
    In the Shang Dynasty, grain wine was already very popular and drinking wine was very common. From the textual research on the drinking vessels of that period, it can be concluded that there was a lot of wine at that time.
    In the Zhou Dynasty the variants of wine,  such as " Wuqi" and "Sanjiu." Qi means broomcorn millet. "Wuqi" included "Fanqi," "Liqi," "Angqi, " "Tiqi, " and "Shenqi. " They were named mainly according to the time of making wine and the clarity of wine.
    In the Qin and the Han dynasties, with the development of twice fer-mented liquor the technique of making wine improved greatly. There were more kinds of wine. In the Wei and the Jin dynasties, of the so called Weijin demeanour flourished. One of its striking characteristics was that scholars' drinking wine became a common practice.
    In the Tang Dynasty, apart from grain wine there were fruit wine and medical liquor such as grape wine, Tianmendong liquor and so on. The schol-ars of this period were addicted to drinking. The poets Libai, Dufu and Luyou not only had a liking for wine but also wrote poems about it frequently.
In the Song Dynasty, winemaking improved greatly. The scholars of that time also had a liking for wine. Zhubian listed more than 210 kinds of wine in his book Quweijiuwen. Douping's works told stories about wine. It included 15 pieces of writing,  beginning with Names of Wine and ending with Drinkers' Wager Game. The Wine Scripture of Northern Mountain by Zhu Yizhong was the monograph about making wine. The two famous poets Sushi and Xin Qiji were both fond of wine.
    In the Yuan Dynasty, white spirit came into being. According to Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica white spirit did not come into be-ing until the Yuan Dynasty. One version was that white spirit was passed to our country in the Yuan Dynasty and the other one was that it existed before the Yuan Dynasty. The opinions were different.
    In the Ming and the Qing dynasties, with the development of wine mak-ing there came some famous wine. Wang Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty once wrote a sequence of poems, introducing the birthplace, origin and characteris-tics of Sangluo Liquor,  Yanggao Liquor, Zhangqiu Liquor, Jinhua Liquor and Magu Liquor.
    In a word, Chinese wine culture was constantly enriched and developed. There were more and more kinds of wine and plenty of cultural phenomena concerning wine. Chinese wine culture became unique.