Rice and Fruit Wines · FFET10084
Grape Wine
Both the Bencao Gangmu and the Qingbai Leichao have an entry on grape wine, and the Bencao Gangmu notes that the brewed kind tastes good.
Sweet fermented rice foams gently in a clay basin with a wooden spoon in it, beside it stand a bowl of rice-wine glutinous balls, a bunch of grapes and a basket of green plums, and grapes hang on a trellis to the left.
Rice wines of the sweet fermented-rice kind, and wines brewed from fruit.
In the grape wine entry of the fourth grain section of Li Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu (published in 1596), the collected-explanations note reads: "There are two kinds of grape wine; the brewed kind tastes good." The two kinds are a brewed wine and one made by the method used for distilled spirits. The Qingbai Leichao, published in 1916, says in its entry on grape wine: "Grape wine is made from grape juice; a great deal is imported from abroad, in several kinds."