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A woman works in the field in a valley between Zunyi and Maotai town, Guizhou province, China, 15 August 2017. (issued 21 August) Moutai is a brand of baijiu, a distilled Chinese liquor (spirit), made in the town of Maotai in China's Guizhou province. Produced by the state-owned Kweichow Moutai Company, the beverage is distilled from fermented sorghum and now comes in several different varieties. Maotai was produced at several local distilleries. During the Chinese Civil War, People's Liberation Army forces camped at Maotai and partook of the local liquor. Following the Communist victory in the war, the government consolidated the local distilleries into one state-owned company, Kweichow Moutai. It became a popular drink at state functions, one of the country's most popular spirits as well as symbol of corruption in China in previous years. The price of Moutai is soaring. Real market price for a bottle of 2014 Moutai Feitian can reach well above 2,000 yuan (255 EURO), almost double that of a year ago. A bottle produced in 2003 is priced at above 4,000 yuan (510 EURO). Moutai’s Shanghai-listed shares closed in May 2017 at 454 yuan (57.90 EURO), the highest level since the company’s 2001 listing, and up more than 300 per cent from its early 2014 level, when the share price was just above 100 yuan (12.75 EURO). Blessed with a stock that is trading at 30 times earnings per share, the company has unseated Johnnie Walker producer Diageo as the world’s most valuable liquor concern.
While Moutai is China’s national liquor – former premier Zhou Enlai used it to entertain Richard Nixon in Beijing when the former US president visited China, Deng Xiaoping relied on it to repeatedly toast Henry Kissinger at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, and President Xi Jinping brought bottles of it to exchange goodwill with Ma Ying-jeou, the former president of Taiwan, in Singapore – the drink has also won a name as a symbol for lavish government spending. (Photo by Aleksandar Plavevski/EPA)
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