The Vietnamese immigrant family turning America on to baijiu, China’s favourite fiery tipple
- When the seven members of the Ly family landed in Portland, Oregon, they brought with them their knowledge of baijiu distilling
- The five siblings now honour their late father’s legacy through the Vinn Distillery
Liquid razor blades. That’s how American journalist Dan Rather infamously described baijiu.
Westerners have historically had a hard time with China’s beloved tipple. In 1972, ahead of the first historic summit between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, Alexander Haig, went so far as to send a breathless cable through to the White House warning that “under no – repeat no – circumstances should the president actually drink from his glass in response to banquet toasts”.
While aficionados describe baijiu’s flavour profile as savoury, floral and even fruity, one best-unidentified food and wine writer recently described it to us as being reminiscent of how he imagines “a fresh corpse smells”.
If you’ve never had baijiu, don’t let the squeamishness of a few Westerners discourage you. Better to keep in mind the millions of Chinese whose deeply held affection for the drink has made it the most popular spirit in the world – by a wide margin.
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the drink can be an acquired taste, and at least in the US, a difficult sell. No one knows this better than the five siblings who are the proprietors of America’s only baijiu distillery.
“Had we known what we were getting ourselves into ...” says one of the five, Michelle Ly, ruefully, as we speak in the sleek, modern tasting room of the Vinn Distillery bottle shop, in Portland, Oregon. “I think it was a fortunate thing that we were ignorant to how much Americans weren’t ready for baijiu. It was only after we went out and tried to sell it that we realised: ‘Oh my gosh, this is the hardest stuff to sell!’”
