Wine and wine drinking manner in Thăng Long-Hà Nội
VGP - In Hà Nội, wine is not a daily beverage. It is only used to welcome guests, on death anniversaries, Tết holidays, or festivals. Wine is made from fermented and distilled sticky rice. Good wine is clear, sparkling and does not leave the drinker with a headache. In his Treatise on Geography written in 1437, Nguyễn Trãi wrote that Thụy Chương precinct of ancient Thăng Long (now Thụy Khuê precinct, Tây Hồ District) was famous for good wine.
Wine scented with lotus and daisy is called flower wine;
wine mixed with medicinal herbs, animal glue, snake, or gecko is called tonic
wine and is used to reinforce strength for the old and the ill. There is also
sweet wine which is not boiled and distilled but made of fermented sticky rice
called “nếp cẩm”. Wine was traditionally kept in glazed terra-cotta jars in
poor families and in ornamental jars, china or silver phials in rich families.
Now wine is usually put in glass bottles.
Illustration
photo
In his book Notes Taken on Rainy Days, Phạm Đình Hổ
wrote about a custom in Thăng Long: “When inviting guests to drink wine, the
host only uses small cups the size of the thumb and only drinks some cups then
stops. If the host invites guests to drink too much, they may be criticized as
being alcoholic”. Wine connoisseurs in Thăng Long-Hà Nội had nice manners: when
drinking wine with other people or when offering guests, they did not raise
their cups higher than that of the oldest person, they drank in small gulps to
enjoy delicious taste of wine, offered wine to show love and respect to each
other, and never drank more than 3 cups to avoid getting drunk.
For a long time, knowing how to drink wine was one of the
true manifestations of an ideal man:
