Why rice wine is technically a beer that has been brewed for millennia

Food & Drink · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Though it shares a name with fruit-based vintages, rice wine is closer to beer in its creation. By using fungal cultures to transform grain starch into sugar and then alcohol, ancient civilizations across Asia perfected a complex, centuries-old fermentation process that remains a staple of dining and cooking today.

Rice wine is an ancient beverage with a history spanning approximately 9,000 years, with the earliest evidence discovered in central China as a mixture of rice and honey. By the time of the Shang Dynasty, which lasted from 1750 to 1100 BCE, rice wine was so culturally significant that it was frequently included among funerary goods. The practice eventually spread, reaching Japan by the third century BCE following the arrival of wet rice cultivation, and even finding its way to the Roman Empire by the first century BCE via trade routes established after Alexander the Great’s Indian expedition.

The production process is fundamentally a grain-based fermentation, distinguishing it from fruit wines. Whether crafting Chinese mijiu from glutinous rice or Japanese sake from non-glutinous varieties, the core mechanism relies on a fungal culture—known as jiuqu in Chinese or koji in Japanese. This culture serves a dual purpose: it provides the enzymes necessary to break down rice starches into fermentable sugars and introduces the yeast required to convert those sugars into ethanol. The resulting beverage typically ranges from 10% to 25% alcohol by volume.

Traditional methods, such as those used for Chinese mijiu, involve soaking and steaming the rice before cooling it in ceramic vats. Once the fungal culture is introduced, the mixture undergoes a transformation where the liquid is eventually combined with additional water and fungi to reach the desired consistency. Beyond its role as a formal dining beverage, rice wine is a functional culinary tool. It is frequently employed to enhance flavors or neutralize undesirable notes in ingredients like fish and shellfish. When served as a drink, it is often warmed, with taste testers identifying 60 °C, or 140 °F, as the optimal temperature for consumption.

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