Highland Barley Wine 青稞酒
Highland Barley Wine is featured among the local specialties of Yunnan.
Photo adjustments
EXIF orientation normalized; resized without changing aspect ratio; converted to WebP. No subject edits.
Highland Barley Wine (青稞酒) is documented in family brewing traditions in Shangri-La (香格里拉), Diqing (迪庆). A China News Service 2012 interview with brewer Sinuo Luojie (斯诺罗杰) records a craft handed down through four generations and its place at local celebrations.
How it is made
At the family workshop, barley is steamed before dawn and taken out around midday. In the afternoon it is soaked and fermentation starter added. The family also processes barley fermented on the preceding day. China News Service describes the work as manual, following a traditional method.
Where it comes from
Sinuo Luojie learned brewing from his mother, who had learned it from her grandfather. The grandfather was a caravan leader on the Tea Horse Road (茶马古道) and carried barley wine on his journeys before beginning to brew it at home.
How it is eaten
The brewer describes barley wine as part of festivals, gatherings, weddings and celebrations of a birth. During the reporting visit, he raised a bowl of the drink to offer the Tibetan greeting of good fortune.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-30. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.