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Alcoholic drinks from Southern China

Lychee wine (lizhi jiu)荔枝酒

Fresh lychees are peeled, pitted and pressed, and the juice is fermented at a low temperature with wine yeast. In one study plain juice gave 8.48 % alcohol, while freeze-concentrating the juice brought it to about 16 %.

Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks5 months

Recipe

Lychee wine (lizhi jiu), a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: slgckgc, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
No fixed amounts recordedLaboratory work with no fixed batch. Zhu and colleagues (2018) compared three processes, but only their abstract was read, so no amounts are given.
Fresh lychee juicePeeled, pitted and pressed lychees[zhu2018][wp-lychee]
Wine yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae)Strain MERIT.ferm in the lychee wine trials[chen2014][chen2016]
Starterdefined-culture (Saccharomyces cerevisiae wine yeast)

Total time across the recorded steps: 5 months

Start
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What changes: Lychees are washed, peeled and the stones taken out

Step 1 of 6
Peel and pit the lychees
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Yeasts

Output: lychee flesh.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Fresh lychees are peeled, pitted and pressed, and the juice is fermented at a low temperature with wine yeast. In one study plain juice gave 8.48 % alcohol, while freeze-concentrating the juice brought it to about 16 %. Made in 6 steps over 5 months. The longest step, bottle and age cool, takes 5 months (Wu Y 2011) and runs at 8–10 °C (Wu Y 2011). Saccharomyces cerevisiae wine yeast does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step5 monthsReported[wu2011]Bottle and age cool
Temperature8–10 °CReported[wu2011]Bottle and age cool

What makes this one different

Lychee wine is a grape-style fruit wine made from pressed juice and wine yeast, not a Chinese rice wine. In one study, freezing out water from the juice, before or after fermenting, nearly doubled the alcohol from 8.48 % to about 16 %.

Related ferments

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Wikipedia's article says lychee wine has been made in Canton since at least the Tang dynasty, and that Xuzhoufu lychee wine was kept for the imperial family in the Qing dynasty. Lychee has a short harvest period and stores poorly, which is why growers turned part of the crop into wine.

  1. [zhu2018] Zhu Y.-T., Mi S.-X., Cai Y.-J., Zhao M.-M., Deng X.-L., Zhao Q.-Z. 2018, Comparison of the quality of litchi wines produced through three processes, Modern Food Science and Technology 34(11):185–193, doi:10.13982/j.mfst.1673-9078.2018.11.028 (abstract)paper
  2. [wu2011] Wu Y., Zhu B., Tu C., Duan C., Pan Q. 2011, Generation of volatile compounds in litchi wine during winemaking and short-term bottle storage, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 59(9):4923–4931, doi:10.1021/jf2001876 (abstract)paper
  3. [chen2014] Chen D., Chia J.Y., Liu S.Q. 2014, Impact of addition of aromatic amino acids on non-volatile and volatile compounds in lychee wine fermented with Saccharomyces cerevisiae MERIT.ferm, International Journal of Food Microbiology 170:12–20 (abstract)paper
  4. [chen2015] Chen D., Yap Z.Y., Liu S.Q. 2015, Evaluation of the performance of Torulaspora delbrueckii, Williopsis saturnus and Kluyveromyces lactis in lychee wine fermentation, International Journal of Food Microbiology 206:45–50 (abstract)paper
  5. [chen2016] Chen D., Liu S.Q. 2016, Transformation of chemical constituents of lychee wine by simultaneous alcoholic and malolactic fermentations, Food Chemistry 196:988–995 (abstract)paper
  6. [wp-lychee] Wikipedia, Lychee wine (outline only)wiki