Bronze Age cemetery offers up clues to how ancient Chinese brewed red rice wine

Pottery vessels containing traces of alcohol from a Bronze Age cemetery in northwestern China indicate that people at the time consumed beverages made using a fermentation starter of rice and a red mould. Archaeologists said the drink, similar to red rice wine, played a key role in their mortuary rituals, and its presence at the Mogou cemetery suggested a tradition that probably served to strengthen the bond between the living and the dead. Researchers from Northwest University in Xian, the...