How baijiu, China’s ‘white spirit’, stopped being uncool thanks to hip cocktail bars that are making it part of a new ‘drinking language’

China’s national drink, baijiu had fallen out of favour with Chinese youth, but a renaissance is happening, thanks to cool bars that specialise in the spirit

We talk to a bar owner whose Instagrammable cocktails are making youngsters ‘excited to learn about baijiu’, and look at how the drink’s marketing is evolving

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Xizang Without Zombie, a baijiu cocktail at Guangdong bar SanYou. China’s “white spirit” used to be seen as uncool by young drinkers, but that’s changing. Photo: SanYou

Published: 4:15am, 8 Mar 2024Updated: 8:14am, 8 Mar 2024

In the 2021 Chengdu International Spirits Competition, Bastien Ciocca – co-founder of award-winning cocktail bars Hope & Sesame and SanYou, in Guangzhou, southern China – was one of two foreigners on the baijiu-tasting panel.

Nobody paid him any attention, not even when he wrote tasting notes that were similar to those penned by the master distiller of Luzhou Laojiao, a baijiu brand that dates back to 1573 during the Ming dynasty.

Heads only turned towards this perceived token foreigner after the audience learned that his bar SanYou, now with a branch in Shenzhen, is one of the few baijiu cocktail bars in the country.

“After the break, a lot of people asked for my WeChat details,” he says, before admitting that only a few of these contacts came to fruition. “But what this means to me is that the brands want to do something but aren’t sure where to start.”

Bastien Ciocca is the co-founder of bars Hope & Sesame and SanYou in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Photo: SanYou

Dubbed the drink that can “solve anything” by then United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger in a meeting with then Chinese vice-premier Deng Xiaoping in 1974, the mostly transparent baijiu – which translates to “white alcohol” – became the national tipple, frequently downed in shot glasses at elaborate banquets.

Made mainly with sorghum, baijiu is a distilled spirit that’s fermented in urns or mud vats that may have been around for centuries, contributing to its sought-after vim.