From old workshops to a state distillery.

Jiannanchun is a strong-aroma (nongxiang) baijiu made in Mianzhu, a city in Sichuan province, in the Jiannan subdistrict, Chinese Wikipedia says. The brand reaches back to the Tang dynasty for its story: a Tang text by Li Zhao mentions a liquor from the Jiannan region called “shaochun,” and Chinese Wikipedia quotes the saying “Tang court liquor, today’s Jiannanchun.” The same article adds, citing China Business News in 2019, that the relationship between that Tang liquor and the modern brand is unclear.

The modern company begins in May 1951. A history by Zhang Yongshun of Mianzhu’s party-history and local-gazetteer office, published in Bashu Shizhi in 2025 and reposted on The Paper, says that old distilling workshops in the town, among them Zhu Tianyi and Tiancheng Xiang, were taken into state ownership that month and merged into the Mianzhu county state-run liquor factory, the predecessor of today’s distillery. In March 1958, the same history says, the factory began trials with new raw materials, and the liquor that came out of them is the one known as Jiannanchun. It was named a Sichuan famous liquor in 1963, began selling to Japan, Hong Kong and Macau in 1974, and was named a national famous liquor at the third national liquor tasting in 1979.

The factory’s name followed its product. A company profile on the Chinese marketing site Digitaling says it became the Sichuan Mianzhu Jiannanchun Distillery in 1984, a joint-stock company in 1994 and the Sichuan Jiannanchun Group in 1996. In the shorthand of the Chinese drinks trade it is the “Jian” of “Mao-Wu-Jian” — Moutai, Wuliangye and Jiannanchun — a grouping Chinese Wikipedia records, and the business newspaper Yicai counts it among the “six golden flowers” of Sichuan liquor.

A heritage technique and a lotus on the bottle.

The way Jiannanchun is made has official standing. In 2008 its traditional brewing technique was added to China’s national list of intangible cultural heritage, under the heading for traditional distilled-liquor techniques, on a nomination from Mianzhu, Chinese Wikipedia says. The same heading covers the techniques of three Sichuan neighbours: Wuliangye, Shui Jing Fang and Langjiu.

Its visual identity is far less documented than its history. Chinese Wikipedia describes a Buddhist lotus design on the bottle, intended to suggest nobility and elegance. No designer or agency is credited for the bottle or the wordmark in the sources available, so none is named here.

That reputation was tested in May 2008. The Wenchuan earthquake, which struck Sichuan that month, damaged large stocks of the company’s base liquor, Yicai reported in 2023; together with disputes over employee shareholdings and the legal case described below, the newspaper said, it pushed the brand out of the top tier of Chinese liquor, where the “Mao-Wu-Jian” grouping had once placed it.

The company’s leadership grew up inside the old state factory. Yicai reported in 2023 that Qiao Tianming joined the Sichuan Mianzhu state-run liquor factory in 1982 and rose through it to deputy director, deputy factory head and, later, chairman of the group, the post he held when the business was restructured.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Chinese baijiu names: Jiannanchun, Xifeng, Langjiu, Gujing Gongjiu, Shui Jing Fang, Jiugui and Hongxing Erguotou. Four come from western China — Jiannanchun from Mianzhu and Shui Jing Fang from Chengdu, both in Sichuan; Langjiu from Erlang in Gulin County, also in Sichuan; and Xifeng from Fengxiang, near Baoji in Shaanxi. Gujing Gongjiu is made at Gujing, near Bozhou in Anhui; Jiugui comes from Jishou in western Hunan; and Hongxing Erguotou is a Beijing brand.

Baijiu is sorted into aroma styles, and the group spans several of them. Chinese Wikipedia classes Jiannanchun and Gujing Gongjiu as strong-aroma baijiu, Langjiu as sauce-aroma, Xifeng as the phoenix-aroma style, and Jiugui as a mixed-aroma spirit of its own fuyu type; Beijing Red Star describes its erguotou as light-aroma. Ownership varies just as widely. Shui Jing Fang’s Shanghai-listed company is controlled by Diageo; Jiugui’s Shenzhen-listed company sits within the state food group COFCO; Gujing’s company has been listed in Shenzhen since 1996; and Hongxing Erguotou’s maker is owned by Beijing state investors.

A baijiu brand’s identity is usually carried by a name, a place and a bottle rather than by a single logo, and the company behind the name may have been merged, listed or sold many times since the brand began. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its baijiu is distilled and bottled, and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A management buyout, a court case and a state partner.

Jiannanchun is a privately held company with a state partner. In 2003 the group drew up a plan for the orderly exit of state capital and a strategic reorganisation, and on 6 January 2004 the Sichuan provincial finance department approved it, Yicai reported in March 2023. Twenty executives led by the chairman, Qiao Tianming, formed Sichuan Tongsheng Investment, which took a majority of the group. The name did not go with the shares: after the state exited, the trademark and other intangible assets stayed with the government, Yicai reported, and in December 2025 the paper said ownership of the Jiannanchun mark still rests with Mianzhu’s state assets.

The restructuring later reached court. On 24 March 2023 the Leshan Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Qiao Tianming to five years in prison for bribery and for illegally dividing state assets during the restructuring, and ordered those assets and their proceeds returned to the Mianzhu city government, Yicai reported. His son, Qiao Yu, has been vice-chairman and general manager and the group’s public face since April 2022, the financial news site Lanjing reported in September 2025.

The state has since come back in as a shareholder. On 12 September 2025 the Mianzhu State-owned Asset Affairs Centre subscribed new capital and became the group’s second-largest shareholder with about 14.5 per cent, Lanjing and Yicai reported, while Tongsheng remains the largest; Yicai called it a sign that problems left over from the restructuring were gradually being resolved. Jiannanchun has not listed its shares. In December 2025 Yicai reported that Shui Jing Fang had denied market talk that it was being bought by Jiannanchun. The group’s website is jnc.cn.

For a design guide, Jiannanchun shows how a liquor can hold on to a place name, a Tang story and a lotus while the company behind it changes hands. Compare Wuliangye, the five-grain baijiu of Yibin, and Luzhou Laojiao. For this guide we use lacquer red, lotus pink and old gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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