Lao Longkou Aged Head-Blended Liquor

Lao Longkou Aged Head-Blended Liquor

　　　“A cup of Lao Longkou, a plate of spring chicken” — this has long been a popular saying in Northeast China, pairing fine liquor with delicious food. Lao Longkou Aged Head-Blended Liquor is a traditional product of Shenyang Lao Longkou Distillery and best represents the characteristics of Lao Longkou liquor. It boasts the typical features of strong aroma Daqu liquor: clear and transparent liquid, rich cellar fragrance, mellow and refreshing taste, and a long-lasting aftertaste. It has been rated as a famous liquor of Liaoning Province in various editions and has won special awards. In 1980, it was named a high-quality product of Liaoning Province. In 1984, it won a silver cup award at the Ministry of Light Industry’s Liquor Quality Competition.

　　At the triangular area called Lao Longkou at the intersection of Zhulin Road in Dadong District, Shenyang, there is groundwater that is particularly clear and sweet, unlike any other. In 1662 (the first year of the Kangxi reign in the Qing Dynasty), a distillery was built at Lao Longkou. Lao Longkou Aged Head-Blended Liquor developed from this very distillery. Over the past three hundred years, the Lao Longkou brand and its reputation have gradually expanded and become widely known. During the Qing Dynasty, Lao Longkou liquor was regarded as a precious tribute and served in the imperial court. Every time the emperor visited the Eastern Qing Tombs to worship ancestors, he would drink this liquor.

　　The Lao Longkou Liquor Museum is located at No. 1 Zhulin Road, Dadong District, Shenyang, and was established in 2002. The museum adopts the architectural style of the Qing Dynasty, with a construction area of 1,200 square meters (exhibition area: 999 square meters, tasting area: 201 square meters), a parking lot covering 1,000 square meters, and a total site area of 2,200 square meters. The facade design draws inspiration from Qing Dynasty memorial archways, flanked by simple flush-gable and rolled-roof auxiliary buildings. The roof is covered with blue tiles, the exterior walls are built with blue bricks, and wooden structures such as beams, columns, and doors/windows are hand-painted or varnished. The overall structure centers around the museum, with Qing Dynasty-style taverns and distilleries on both sides, forming a platform to showcase Chinese liquor culture and achieving an organic integration of theory and practice.

　　The museum is divided into two main sections: the “Liquor Culture Exhibition Area” and the “Traditional Distillery Workshop Exhibition Area.” The “Liquor Culture Exhibition Area” includes six parts: “Origins of Liquor,” “Liquor Customs and Etiquette,” “Liquor Ware and Utensils,” “Liquor Poetry and Paintings,” “History of Lao Longkou Development,” and “Exhibition Room of Vintage Products.” It houses over forty pieces of liquor ware, more than fifty calligraphy and paintings by notable figures, over two hundred old Lao Longkou trademarks from different periods of the 20th century, over three hundred vintage bottles, trophies and certificates awarded to some Lao Longkou products, as well as fragments of the 19th-century wine storage vessel known as “wine sea.” The “Traditional Distillery Workshop Exhibition Area” vividly recreates the traditional Chinese liquor-making process, displaying various utensils used in ancient brewing methods, the raw materials required for brewing, a collection of century-old stone mills unearthed on-site, and some vintage Lao Longkou products from the 1950s to the 1980s.