Explore the Secrets of Vinegar

When it comes to vinegar, one must be reminded of Zhenjiang, the hometown of vinegar in China. As a museum showing the long history of vinegar culture in Zhejiang, the China Vinegar Culture Museum is the only industrial tourism demonstration site in the vinegar production industry that integrates the protection of national intangible cultural heritage and national industrial heritage. The exhibition is divided into different sections, including the History Hall, the Vinegar Workshop, the Sauce Garden, and an Ocean of Wine, which comprehensively demonstrates the history of Zhenjiang vinegar represented by the century-old Hengshun brand and the development of China’s vinegar industry.

Visitors can smell the vinegar even before entering the site. At the museum entrance, visitors can see an elegant vinegar urn standing in the middle of the square, which remains the largest vinegar container in the world. It is not only a piece of decoration, but also the storage for three tons of vinegar.

The History Hall is behind a factory gate dating back to the 1970s. Here visitors can find the introduction of Zhenjiang vinegar, its culture and historical origin, and the development and different kinds of Chinese vinegar through various methods, on the exhibition boards, statues, reproductions of scenes, video playback, and electronic sand table, etc.

After learning the history, it is time to see the Vinegar Workshop, which not only a tourist spot, but also a real vinegar-making workshop. Here, visitors can appreciate technicians performing different steps of vinegar-making, including winemaking, stirring the fermentation urn, pouring vinegar, and processing the sauce. In the drying room on the second floor, visitors can taste vinegar with different flavors, such as handmade vinegar, soybean vinegar, garlic vinegar, while trying a hand at traditional crafts for free.

Sauce and vinegar have been inseparable since ancient times. In the Sauce Garden, visitors can see the “shop in the front, workshop at the back” layout and operation mode of the Hengshun Sauce Shop, which is representative of sauce-making in the southern part of China. An Ocean of Wine mainly exhibits the historical origin and development of Chinese rice wine, one of the three ancient wine-making methods in the world. Hengshun Baihua Wine remains a representative of Suzhou-style rice wine among the varieties. All in all, an excellent pot of vinegar is contributed by the good natural environment, water, and raw materials of excellent quality, and Hengshun’s unique bacteria.

From a grain of rice to a drop of vinegar, it takes at least 9 months to undergo 48 processes. Yet, with such ingenuity and superb traditional skills, Zhenjiang people have created Zhenjiang balsamic vinegar, widespread all over the world.

 

Address: No. 66, Guangyuan Road, Hengshun Industrial Park, Dantu District, Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province