Qiyue rice wine, produced in Yixian county – in Huangshan city, Anhui province – recently won a gold medal at the International Wine & Spirit Competition, or ISWC, held in London.
The IWSC, founded in 1969, is the most prestigious competition rewarding excellence in wine and spirit production from all over the world.
The wine was developed by Xu Xuechao – founder of Qiyue Farm – and his team.
In 2015, Xu left his hometown and contracted 20 mu (1.33 hectares) of land in Yixian county to build Qiyue farm with his friends and engage in organic rice farming.
Qiyue is homonymous with "contract" in Chinese. "People in ancient Huizhou attached great importance to contracts and we want to echo this kind of spirit," Xu said.
There, Xu taught local villagers agricultural knowledge and paid them two to three times the market price for their organic rice. As the land yielded more than 350 kilograms per mu in 2016, more and more villagers were attracted to grow it.
Xu Xuechao, founder of Qiyue Farm, transports the seedlings of organic rice. [Photo/huangshannews.cn]
In the face of fierce competition, Xu came up with the idea of rice wine making, which is a tradition in Huizhou and enables the added value of the organic rice to increase.
Xu and his team researched and developed more than 20 kinds of organic rice wine under the guidance of professional wine making skills inheritors. They spent some 10 years building an organic supply system from planting to brewing.
In the first half of 2022, sales of Qiyue rice wine reached 6 million yuan ($887,990).
A colorful array of Qiyue rice wine goes on display. [Photo/huangshannews.cn]
Xu's company independently built a high-standard modern winery that covers thousands of square meters and he turned nearly 1,000 mu of land in Huangshan into organic farming terrain.
Other green food producers like Qiyue are also booming in Yixian county. The county is pushing its green food industry to achieve an output value of 1.5 billion yuan by 2025.