Any whisky lovers have any experience of this Chinese whisky? I got given a bottle a few years ago by a Chinese friend and it’s sat unnoticed in a cabinet since. I was in Heathrow last week and killing time in the Whisky shop there and saw two bottles for sale, one was £180, the one I had was £295!!! It’s not even very big, 500ml I think.

Clearly I’ve tried to cultivate an appreciation for it now, and had a little taste, imagine rotten cabbage fermented in turps for a year or three!

So, is anyone aware if there’s a ‘right’ way to drink it to make it more palatable? E.g. tequila? Or should I just take it to my Chinese takeaway and see if the owners will buy it off me?

It’s not really whisky, it’s baijiu. Prices tend to be inflated, as with many Chinese ‘delicacies’.

Baijiu? What’s that then? Does it go off?

Maotai is distilled from a blend of sorghum, wheat, and peas. Its taste is tough to describe. Imagine rotten cabbage, ethyl alcohol, and paint thinner, blended and strained. It smells like ammonia; the Wikipedia page for Maotai notes its “solvent and barnyard aromas.” The taste lingers long after swallowing, shadowing the rest of the meal like a culinary revenant.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2009/04/is-this-the-best-selling-liquor-in-the-world/13060/

Cheers flash, particularly liked the comment ‘people who try it involuntarily screw up their faces and cry out in pain’

think i’ll keep it for when we have people round!!

I’ve been given it on occasion when being the ‘honoured’ guest with Chinese clients.

Vile.

Second only to the durian my team in Singapore try and cram down me. I accepted politely the first time, but no more! It’s another flavour that lingers with one for an age…

ha, the food banned on aircraft. like eating custard whilst sitting on an open toilet..

I acquired a taste for these bad-boys whilst in Thailand…

Strangely moreish.

I also absolutely love the Swedish salt licorice. Mmmmm, ammonium chloride!

Like piss flavoured sweets. Again, incredibly addictive once you get the taste for them.

Having had moutai and soji and raki and all manner of horrendous spirits over the years I have found somenthing worse.

Korean Ginseng ‘wine’, comes in a bottle with a ginseng root in it. If you ever played rugby, you’ll know the taste you get when you land face down on the pitch, that muddy/grassy/slightly old manurey taste, well it tastes just like that, only massively alaocholic and immeasurably worse for it.

“Does it go off?”

No, it’s off to start with.

Weirdly, it is the most widely consumed spirit in the world.

Looks like we don’t have our finger on the pulse

Or should I just take it to my Chinese takeaway and see if the owners will buy it off me?

^^^ This.  Make yourself some cash.

I have never tasted them before as I have only tasted rice wine of all sorts …

Its pricey because its the bribing sprit of choice for government officials.

What @CaptainFlashheart said. I lived in Beijing for a number of years, and can attest that it’s nasty nasty stuff. Smells like diesel, tastes worse. I brought a bottle back to a friend of mine in the UK who will notoriously drink anything – he couldn’t drink it. Used the rest to light the BBQ a few times.

Strangely, or not, my Greek friends loved the moutai I brought them.

There are some nice “herbal wines” (not grape-based) in China, but even the expensive moutai is foul. For the record – having also lived in Singapore – eating durians is child’s play compared to a night downing moutai shots with your Chinese coworkers/customers.

Bribery, you say?

Hmmm…

🕵️‍♀️

£295 a bottle – that’s some seriously expensive barbecue lighter fuel!!

Actually flashheart, if you want a bottle to schmooze a business deal through….