I hope to post photos and recaps from many of the World Baijiu Day events held last Saturday–I’ve already seen some nice pics from Beijing, Guangzhou, London, Los Angeles and Sydney.
I spent much of the day at Pop-Up Beijing, where a steady stream of tasters tried baijiu by Harmony, Yimuquan and Wu Ling from China and byejoe and Taizi from The United States and New Zealand (see pics below). It was nice to see people compare and contrast baijius, and pick favorites.
We paired them with ‘drunken shrimp‘ pizzas from Gung Ho, created and delivered by Josh Lally. The pies had a baijiu-tomato base and was topped with shrimp sauteed and flambeed with baijiu. They were delicious and captured some characteristics of the spirits.
(I also fueled myself with sour apple baijiu jello by Dustin Merrett from Windy City Ballroom. Dangerous stuff!)
The tasting went far past the 8 PM finishing time and we then headed to Jing-A Taproom to try the baijiu-inspired Qu Brew. I’ll have more on that, and on other happenings around the world, shortly.
I’ll just say the tasting went even better than I hoped, in terms of its casual nature, the number of attendees, and the genuine interest in baijiu. We stuck to sipping, then at 8:08 PM on the eighth day of the eight month–also the anniversary of the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics–each person poured a bit of his or her favorite spirit and we ganbei’d. All in all, good times.
Thanks to Glenn Schuitman and Vito Zhang and the Pop-Up team for making the event such a success and to the producers for providing baijiu to taste!
More event write-ups to come.
Founded in 2015, World Baijiu Day is held each August 9, with events in over 60 cities so far. Follow WBD on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And get in touch via spirit (at) worldbaijiuday.com.
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