In 1974, Henry Kissinger told Deng Xiaoping, "I think if we drink enough Maotai we can solve anything."
According to Chinese media, baijiu is the best-selling liquor in the world, and Maotai is the most famous brand of baiju--and one of the few available in the United States. Maotai is pricey: Only finer Chinese restaurants in the States carry it, and the first time I tried it the bottle--stout, ceramic, and red, like a can of Chinese Barbasol--set us back $115 (fortunately, we split it 10 ways). It is normally served at room temperature, but like soju or sake it can be warmed on a burner.
Maotai reached world fame during Nixon's 1972 trip to China, when Zhou Enlai served it to his unsuspecting guests. In 1974, Henry Kissinger told Deng Xiaoping, "I think if we drink enough Maotai we can solve anything."
Maotai is distilled from a blend of sorghum, wheat, and peas. Its taste is tough to describe. Imagine rotten cabbage, ethyl alcohol, and paint thinner, blended and strained. It smells like ammonia; the Wikipedia page for Maotai notes its "solvent and barnyard aromas." The taste lingers long after swallowing, shadowing the rest of the meal like a culinary revenant.
Actually, Maotai's taste is easy to describe; what's hard is to explain why people would drink it. As Tim Clissold noted in his memoir, Mr. China,
I've never met anybody, even at the heights of alcoholic derangement, prepared to admit that they actually liked the taste ... After drinking it, most people screw up their faces in an involuntary expression of pain and some even yell out.
