Yùmǐ yī hú, máidì sānnián; tónghú yī zhǔ, xiāng yī cūn. — One pot of corn wine, buried three years; one bronze pot on the stove, fragrance through the village.
Zha wine (咂酒, Zājiǔ) is the county’s Tujia fermented drink and its ritual register: a wine brewed from corn (玉米酿), buried in the ground for about three years (埋地三年) to mature, and served by heating in a copper pot (铜壶煮). The name is the drinking method — 咂, to suck at the spout — and the drink is the range’s communal form, the wine that appears at the Tujia’s gatherings and feasts rather than at an ordinary meal.
The burying is the maturation: the sealed vessel in the cool ground lets the ferment slow down over years rather than months, which is what gives the wine its depth. The service is as distinctive as the making — the wine is heated in the copper pot and drunk through a spout or straws, the 咂 of the name, which makes the drinking communal by design: one pot, one table, a shared vessel. It is a format, not just a drink.
The wine’s home is the feast and the festival rather than the restaurant — the correct encounter is at a Tujia gathering, where the pot circulates and the drinking is the table’s centre. The three-year burial is the quality claim; younger wine is sharper and less rounded. The service is hot, and the pot is shared.
flowcloud would say that the county’s wine is buried before it is drunk and sucked before it is swallowed — and that three years underground is the patience a celebration deserves.
Where to find it: at the Tujia gatherings and feasts rather than the restaurants — the copper pot circulates at the festival table. All checked October 2026.
Words and Names
咂酒 zājiǔ — zha wine, the sucked-ferment drink · 玉米 yùmǐ — corn, the brewing grain · 埋地 máidì — earth-buried, the maturation method · 铜壶 tónghú — the copper pot, the serving vessel · 土家 Tǔjiā — the Tujia, the drink’s people