Adventures with Chinese Rotgut

Some food adventures don't end well.

Fortune favors the bold, and when I stepped into Lien Hing Supermarket Number 3, I was feeling bold.  My luck with Latvian sprats is proof that randomly chosen selections of unknown products at import groceries can be deliciously serendipitous. 

Lien Hing had promise, and on this visit, it was their liquor aisle that beckoned. In a country where individual states have their own set of rules regarding the import and sale of alcohol, I'm fortunate to live in a state that allows grocery stores to sell spirits. Without this legal favor, California would be more like my native Texas, where liquor-seekers are forced to patronize dedicated liquor stores to buy anything with more than 17% ABV. As a result, store owners here in the Golden State can allot shelf space to the liquor long tail, with obscure offerings with low turnover or niche appeal, secure in the knowledge that they aren't solely dependent upon alcohol sales to remain fiscally afloat. Lien Hing's liquor aisle illustrated this advantage with a bewildering selection of completely unintelligible and mysterious bottles. Lines of Chinese labels, some looking as if they'd gone unchanged since before the Cultural Revolution, and others slick and modern, with full-coverage vinyl wrapped photographs showing smiling young spokesmodels employing their beauty to endorse the contents within. For most of their customers, the tiny importer's sticker on the back of the bottle is unnecessary, but for me, it was my only way of making any sense of what the contents might be.

One set of words that showed up commonly was Fen Chiew. I don't speak Chinese, but a quick iPhone search revealed great online enthusiasm for the stuff, a sorghum-based distilled spirit, so I eagerly picked a moderately priced and old fahioned-looking bottle and marched it over to the register.

Pandora's bottle

Back home, I peeled off the brittle orange plastic wrapping around the bottle's neck. It crumbled in my hand; in retrospect, this was a foreshadow for the production standards of my new experiment. I poured a measure of the stuff into a glass and took a whiff. 

 No skull and crossbones on the label

Rotgut is a kind word; it smelled as if it had been distilled from floor cleaner and compost juice. I don't remember much about the next couple of seconds,  because I ran straight to the sink to wash out my mouth. Sickly sweet, harshly alcoholic, with no apparent value that could possibly be brought out by an amicable mixer. Put short, it was absolute filth.

I won't be deterred by this misstep, and in fact, I'll remain open to any insight that may explain why anyone, spare someone for whom there was no alternative tipple, would ever part with hard-earned money to imbibe something so foul. But until that happens, this pretty earthenware bottle will live in exile at the very back of my liquor cabinet.