A village spirit, a 1915 medal and a state distillery.

Fenjiu, the “Fen spirit,” comes from one village: Xinghuacun, “Apricot Blossom Village,” in Fenyang, Shanxi province. English Wikipedia describes the maker, Shanxi Xinghuacun Fenjiu Distillery Co., Ltd., as a baijiu distillery headquartered in Xinghuacun; Chinese Wikipedia adds that the listed company is a subsidiary of the state-owned Shanxi Xinghuacun Fenjiu Group and holds the registered trademarks for both Fenjiu and Zhuyeqing.

The village tells a long story about itself. Chinese Wikipedia, citing a 1989 report in the journal Wenwu, describes a 1982 excavation of the Xinghuacun site by Jilin University and Shanxi archaeologists that turned up narrow-mouthed, pointed-base jars of the Yangshao culture, which the brewing historian Bao Qi’an interpreted as fermentation vessels; English Wikipedia puts the start of alcohol-making in the village at about 6,000 years ago. A spirit called Fenqing appears in the Book of Northern Qi, where an emperor writes of drinking two cups of it, Chinese Wikipedia notes.

The modern business took shape in the early twentieth century. According to Chinese Wikipedia, the Yiquanyong workshop reorganised in 1915 and absorbed two rival workshops, bringing the village’s distilling under one roof, and its Fenjiu won a first-class gold medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco; China News Service repeated the medal in a 2023 feature. The Jinyu Fenjiu Company was set up in Taiyuan in 1919, which English Wikipedia counts among China’s first modern distilleries, and in 1932 it bought Yiquanyong outright.

The state distillery that makes Fenjiu today was founded in 1949, English Wikipedia and the Chinese article on the company say. At the first national liquor appraisal in 1952, Fenjiu was named one of the “Four Famous Spirits,” and China News Service reported in 2023 that it kept the national famous-liquor title at each later appraisal.

Clear steaming, buried jars and a light aroma.

Fenjiu is the reference point for a whole style. Baijiu is sorted by aroma, and Fenjiu stands for qingxiang, or light aroma; English Wikipedia notes that it once headed a “fen aroma” category that preceded the modern qingxiang name, and Chinese Wikipedia says the listed company helped draft the national standard for light-aroma baijiu.

The method is well documented. English Wikipedia describes sorghum that is ground, soaked, cooked and cooled, then mixed with a qu starter made from barley and peas. Chinese Wikipedia gives the fermentation as 28 days in earthenware jars buried in the ground, a technique the company calls qingzheng erci qing: the grain is steamed, fermented and distilled, then fermented and distilled once more before it is discarded, and the two spirits are aged and blended. English Wikipedia attributes the light aroma to esters such as ethyl acetate and ethyl lactate, and says drinkers describe floral, herbaceous or stone-fruit notes. Chinese Wikipedia records the Xinghuacun Fenjiu brewing technique as a national intangible cultural heritage item.

The range climbs from everyday to premium. Chinese Wikipedia lists Lao Bai Fen, a Guocang (“national collection”) series and the Mutong (“shepherd boy”) series, and the business paper Jiemian reported in July 2022 that the Qinghua, or blue-and-white, series and Guocang sat at the top of the range, with the Qinghua 20 and Qinghua 30 the best sellers. The distillery also makes Zhuyeqing, a herbal liqueur on a Fenjiu base, English Wikipedia says.

Poetry supplies the village’s image. China Daily reported in 2022 that the Xinghuacun name is tied to “Qingming,” the Tang poem by Du Mu in which a herd boy points the way to a tavern in an apricot-blossom village. Chinese Wikipedia notes that the poem’s location is disputed, with some scholars placing it near Chizhou in Anhui, where Du Mu served as prefect.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all mezcal, baijiu and grappa names: Del Maguey, Montelobos, 400 Conejos, Luzhou Laojiao, Fenjiu, Yanghe and Nardini. Spirits brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a bar list.

A spirits brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its spirit is actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirit is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A state distillery with a listed company and a strategic investor.

Fenjiu was early to the stock market. Chinese Wikipedia says the factory was restructured as a company in December 1993 and listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on 6 January 1994, making it the first Chinese baijiu company to list; a Fenjiu museum opened inside the factory grounds in October 1993.

Ownership gained a second large holder in 2018. On 4 February 2018 the listed company announced that its controlling shareholder, Fenjiu Group, would transfer 11.45% of its shares to Huachuang Xinrui, a subsidiary of China Resources Enterprise, the Chinese financial papers National Business Daily and China Securities Journal reported; the transfer was registered by the end of June 2018. Fenjiu Group remained the largest shareholder and China Resources became the second largest, and the state-owned group still makes Fenjiu in Xinghuacun.

The brand now travels further than its province. In an April 2026 release distributed by Xinhua Silk Road, Fenjiu Group said its products had been exported to more than 60 countries and regions. The company’s own site is fenjiu.com.cn; on stock-exchange listings its English name often appears as Shanxi Xinghuacun Fen Wine Factory.

For a design guide, Fenjiu shows how a village name, a medal date and a brewing method can stand in for a logo, with its Qinghua, or blue-and-white, series at the top of the range. Compare Luzhou Laojiao, the strong-aroma baijiu from Sichuan, and Yanghe, the Jiangsu baijiu sold in shades of blue. For this guide we use porcelain cobalt, apricot blossom and jar clay with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Fenjiu’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.