During China's Long March, Red Army soldiers crossed the Chishui River four different times, and managed to dodge a Kuomintang blockade. Aside from its role in the historic march, the river also holds a key recipe in the making of China's most famous liquor, Maotai baijiu. It's said that the liquor was used to sterilize wounds of the soldiers as they stumbled into Moutai town. In a fast-changing environment today, the ancient craftsmanship of producing Maotai is still being practiced. Let's take a look.

Driving into Maotai town, one of the first things you're struck with is the soy-saucy fermented liquor in the air. That's the smell of Maotai, a brand of China's most famous liquor Baijiu, translated as white liquor. 

And this quaint, alluring town in Guizhou province is home to one of the world's best-known liquor companies, Kweichou Moutai. "The Chishui river is Moutai's life," was once one of the company's slogans. Water from the protected Chishui River is the only liquid used in making Maotai. The other ingredients include: locally grown and steamed red sorghum, and a fermentation starter known as "qu". This mixture goes through an open-air stacking fermentation, and pit fermentation in an enclosed space. It is distilled 9 times. The distilled liquor is then filtrated, or "gathered", 7 times, at a high temperature. Each production cycle takes 1 year.

YAN GANG CHIEF BREWER, KWEICHOU MOUTAI GROUP "Most of our traditional operations are done manually by hand, unlike other liquor companies, where automation makes up a big part of their production. Our liquor must be stored for a long time. From the time production is underway until the bottle is out of the factory, it takes at least 5 years. This may not be the case for other liquors."

The distilled baijiu is stored for up to 4 years in pottery jars. Both during and after this storage period, the liquor will go through an elaborate blending process. Once the blending is done, various quality tests are done before final products are packed. From bottle washing, to filling the liquor, to capping, to labelling, to the tying of red ribbons around the bottles' necks, then finally code spraying, and incasement. All in, it takes 30 processes. 165 steps. A piece of Chinese culture in this white and red bottle.