The beautiful "abundance" scenery of Xijiu Mountain, where the sorghum for liquor-making reddens the autumn.

Autumn breezes gently caress the slopes, where the heavy, crimson sorghum tassels paint the hillsides red. This deep, gentle, and profound red undulates with the contours of the mountain terrain, rolling forth a joyous celebration of harvest.

Sorghum Harvest at the Xijiu Sorghum Demonstration Base

Stepping into the Xijiu sorghum demonstration base, one sees sorghum harvesters operating back and forth in the fields, efficiently harvesting and threshing the grain in a single motion. Farmers move about the fields, picking ears, bagging, and transporting them, their faces alight with happiness and joy.

Xijiu Town Sorghum Growers Drying Sorghum

Grain is the flesh of wine. The quality of the grain directly affects the taste and flavor of the liquor. The glutinous red sorghum chosen by Xijiu, nurtured in the mountains of Guizhou, presents with firm, full, and uniform grains, small in size with thick skins and resistant to steaming and cooking. Its amylopectin content is over 90%, making it a superior ingredient for brewing Xijiu. Indeed, red sorghum marks the beginning of Xijiu's life.

Mature Red Sorghum

To ensure the yield and quality of sorghum needed for Xijiu's brewing, and to achieve stable and efficient production of high-quality sorghum, Xijiu has created the "first workshop" for baijiu production, adopting a model involving the company, government, suppliers, and farmers to establish sorghum planting bases in nine districts and counties within Guizhou Province.

These tiny seeds connect to the quality commitment of Xijiu and to the employment and income security of farmers. In recent years, Xijiu has centralized the procurement and distribution of glutinous sorghum seeds, organic fertilizers, and bio-preparations for base growers, regularly conducting training on planting techniques and quality standards, and establishing a reasonable price protection mechanism, effectively promoting farmers' employment and income.

Sorghum Growers Waiting for Sorghum Quality Inspection at the Tongmin Town Sorghum Purchase Point in Xishui County

With the commencement of the concentrated sorghum purchase for Xijiu, the company has set up 37 sorghum purchase points in various counties of Zunyi to ensure the stable and orderly progress of sorghum purchases. At the Tongmin Town sorghum purchase point in Xishui County, farmers arrive in a steady stream to sell their grain. Staff strictly adhere to standard purchase procedures, inspecting, screening, weighing... The scene is bustling with activity, and the sight of heaps of red sorghum being stored fills each farmer's face with the joy of harvest.

Freshly Harvested Plump Sorghum

Xijiu has always maintained strict quality requirements for the sorghum it acquires. Through the Xijiu sorghum raw material base management platform, the company oversees the informatization and visualization of key links in the raw material process, including planting, acquisition, payment, storage, quality inspection, dispatching, and more, achieving standardized workflow, process supervision, and digital decision-making. Additionally, Xijiu has specially assigned personnel to each purchase point to strictly supervise the grain acquisition work, ensuring the "first quality checkpoint" for raw materials.

Year after year, the cycle repeats. On the banks of the Chishui River at 28° north latitude, each grain of red sorghum absorbs the essence of sun and moon, gathering the toil of planting, the sorghum ultimately ripens fully. The ingenious and dedicated people of Xijiu adhere to the solid-state fermentation process of pure grains, transforming this gift of nature into a rich and fragrant Xijiu. The stories of plowing and harvesting, striving and hoping, continue to be written. May every effort not be in vain, and may every grain of red sorghum be brewed into even more fragrant Xijiu!