"Maotai Shao" brewed by "Tian He Hao Shao Fang" is also sold to Hechuan, Chongqing and other places along the salt road of Chishui River. In the early days, the citizens opened a franchise store at the entrance of Chongqing Road (the exclusive trademark of Youmenkou Delicious Village, which is located in Jie Fangbei, Chongqing), and the area they visited has had a certain influence.
Wang Zhen has five sons, and Wang Lifu is the only son of Wang Yongbing, Wang Zhenfa's youngest son.
Wang Lifu learned to do business with his father when he was young. He was good at management and knew how to operate.
when he inherited the family business of "Tianhe Hao" in Maotai, it was the heyday of the Wang family. At that time, the competition in the salt industry had become increasingly fierce, but the "Maotai Shao" wine produced by Maotai was quietly famous because merchants from all walks of life gathered in Maotai.
Wang Lifu seized the business opportunity, and in the fifth year of Guangxu (1879), he joined hands with Shi Rongxiao (the central person) and Sun Quantai (the water-learning person) to establish the "Rongtaihe" burning house. The reason why the name of the burning house was "Rongtaihe" burning house was based on the combination of one word from each shareholder.
Wang Lifu, who owns his own burning house as a shareholder, has a family-handed koji-making formula, wine-making skills and sales channels, is responsible for the production and sales of burning house, so the brewed shochu is very popular in the market.
Soon, Sun's shareholders withdrew their shares, canceled the word "Tai", and the house reform was called "Ronghe Burning House".
But at that time, in Maotai Village (called Maotai Town at the beginning of liberation), people used to call "Ronghe" liquor for burning houses "wangmao" liquor, because the boss's surname was Wang; "Chengyi" (also called "Chengyu" by some local people) burned the house to make wine as "Huamao" because the boss's surname is Hua; "Hengxing" burned the house to make wine as "Lai Mao" because the boss's surname was Lai.
(The 2nd Literature and History Corridor of Zunyi CPPCC in 28)
In 1915, when Wang Lifu was in the prime of his life and was in full charge of "Ronghe Burning House", the United States would hold the Panama World Expo (the 14th World Expo) in San Francisco to celebrate the navigation of the Panama Canal.
At that time, the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce of Beiyang, China decided to select "Maotai Shao" wine produced in Maotai Town, Renhuai, Guizhou Province (because the wine in Maotai Town, Guizhou Province was already a famous local product at that time), and the "Huisha Maojiu" wine produced by "Ronghe Shaofang" had great influence and good reputation in society and was selected (see page 7 of Intellectual Property News on January 21, 25, trademark collector Zuo)
After strict evaluation by the Expo judges, it won the gold medal in one fell swoop, and it is also called the world's three largest distilled wines together with Scotch whisky and French cognac, which has won a great reputation for China's long-standing brewing industry.
The name of "Moutai" also started here (see page 384 of the county annals of Renhuai County).
The news that Maotai won the prize reached Maotai.
However, the medal stayed in Guiyang, and it failed to reach benevolence.
Wang Lifu never dreamed that the "wangmao" wine he presented to the exhibition would win a prize and become "one of the world's famous wines".
At that time, "Ronghe Burning House" was only apportioned by * * *, so we had to obey and send 2 Jin of "wangmao" wine, without considering whether we could win the prize or not. Later, we may forget to send the exhibition, which is consistent with the social reality that this small place of Maotai lacked communication with the outside world and information was blocked, so it was impossible to have such a long-term sense of commercial competition.
I have to talk about the background of the founder of Chengyi Burning House at that time: Hualian Hui, a native of Linchuan, Jiangxi.
The ancestor came to Guizhou to do business during the reign of Emperor Kangxi and settled in Tuanxi, Zunyi.
the ancestors got rich by selling salt.
Hualian Hui went into business first, then studied and took the exam, and Xianfeng Yihai was an imperial scholar.
Ding Baozhen was appointed as the governor of Sichuan, reformed salt policy, and Hualian Hui was appointed as the chief copywriter of salt law, assisting Tang Jiong to implement the new salt law of "official transportation and commercial sales" before starting wine industry.
his younger brother, Guo ying, whose name is Jian' an, moved to Xindu, Hejiang, Xuyong and other counties in Sichuan, and then served as the general manager of Sichuan Salt Bureau.
Hua Zhihong, son of Hualian Hui, was appointed as a Confucian teacher in Renhuai Hall in the 22nd year of Guangxu (1896).
due to the death of his mother, he returned to Guiyang to manage the salt industry in the 28th year of Guangxu.
at the end of Guangxu, he invested in running a school and running a newspaper, and served as the president of Guizhou Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Advisory Council.
In the first year of Xuantong, he participated in the organization of the "Political Preparatory Meeting for the Constitution of Guizhou Province".
after the recovery of Guizhou, he successively served as Deputy Minister of Finance and General Manager of Official Money Bureau of Dahanjun, Prime Minister of Guizhou Bank and Counsellor of the Governor's Office.
(Abstract: The Story of Maotai Liquor in China, edited by Chen Boshen, Guizhou People's Publishing House, 22, page 392)
History is sometimes naughty and plays tricks on people, and history should always keep its ambiguity and ambiguity.
It leaves the world with an interesting question: Do the winning medals belong to wangmao or Huamao? Is it "Ronghe" products or "Chengyi" products that are sent to the exhibition? The complexity of the problem lies in the fact that it is said that the product presented to the exhibition is the wine of "Ronghe Burning House" (see page 7 of Intellectual Property News on January 21, 25, written by trademark collector Zuo Xuchu: "A History of Maotai Trademarks"), and "Chengyi Burning House" did not deliver the wine, because just a few years before the collection of exhibits, "Chengyi Burning House" caught fire and the production of the wine house was suspended; There is also a saying that after winning the prize, the people who "burned houses in Chengyi" said that they also sent wine, and the products sent to the exhibition included both "Ronghe" and "Chengyi" products (in short, "Ronghe burned houses" definitely sent wine to the exhibition).
It may be that the officials in Renhuai County who handled the matter at that time considered that the two kinds of wines were produced in the same place, and the packaging was basically the same. Although they were marked with the words "Ronghe produced by burning houses" and "Chengyi produced by burning houses", after all, the word "burning houses" was not in line with "international practice", so they simply combined the two products into one product, and the manufacturer was designated as "Maotai Liquor-making Company" that did not actually exist, but foreigners could understand.
Who the medal belongs to has to be disputed. Wang Lifu is very upset at the thought that the products he presented to the exhibition will be taken away by others after winning the prize. Although he has nothing to do with the provincial capital, he decided to get justice.
So, two large burning houses with local signatures, Ronghe and Chengyi, started a lawsuit for the medal.
The lawsuit hit the county * * *, and the governor of Renhuai County, Qin Guangluan, couldn't solve the case (because "wangmao" did send wine to the exhibition, and the other party had connections in the county and province), so it was difficult to decide the case for a while, and the mediation of Renhuai Chamber of Commerce was invalid.
then a paper was sent to the Guizhou provincial office.
winning the prize was originally a happy event, and it should be done beautifully.
On June 14th, 1918, Liu Xianshi, the governor of Guizhou Province, made a ruling on this lawsuit, which had been postponed for three years, and issued the following order from the governor's office:
Make Qin Guangluan, the governor of Renhuai County:
Present one.
Two households, Ronghe and Chengyu, the Mao Liquor Department of Panama Games, submitted a prize, which is difficult to distribute. Please check the reasons.
it is acknowledged.
The products produced in this case were originally in the name of a liquor-making company when they were collected and submitted to the county on the same day. Therefore, we have a copy of the award certificate and medal.
according to the facts presented, although there were no separate households on that day, and there is no way to collect this prize, it should be handed over to the county chamber of commerce office for collection and display, and it is not necessary to give it to the wine-making households to avoid disputes and leave it as a souvenir.
Zhironghe and Chengyu are both winners. Later, both of them can stamp prizes for selling imitation trademarks to enhance their honor, so it is not necessary to pay special attention to acceptance, and then they will follow it.
Governor Liu Xianshi
On June 14th, 27, the Republic of China
At this point, this lawsuit, which has been fought for several years, is called the first "intellectual property lawsuit" in the history of China's wine industry.
(Drunken Maotai by Yuan Renguo, Guizhou People's Publishing House, 21, page 37)
Until August 1953, the three largest burning houses in Maotai Town were nationalized, which became the predecessor of today's Maotai Distillery.
due to historical reasons, the descendants of Wang Lifu family made wine for the collective in the collective winery (commune winery) during the Cultural Revolution.
after the reform and opening-up, Wang Lifu's grandson and grandson decided to carry forward the pioneering spirit of their ancestors, and started a difficult entrepreneurial process to inherit the family's traditional brewing skills, and founded Maotai Town Wang Lifu Liquor Co., Ltd..
The site of "Maotai Town Wang Lifu Liquor Industry" located in Kannonji Community of Maotai Town is the former site of Heijingzi Liquor House founded by Wang Lifu's grandfather in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China.
Maotai-flavor liquor brewed by Wang Lifu's descendants is operated by the descendants themselves, and the koji is made completely according to the ancestral koji formula of "wangmao" wine (dozens of Chinese herbal medicines are used in the secret recipe left by ancestors). During the Dragon Boat Festival, the koji is made by natural fermentation with traditional Chinese medicine formula, mother koji and high-quality wheat, and various microorganisms in the air are received to make natural koji; Sorghum, the main raw material, is scheduled to be planted with local farmers, and green organic fertilizer is used instead of pesticides.
The production tools are made of bamboo and wood, the wine retort and wine cellar are made of local sandstone, and the jars and jars are fired with clay. Everything conforms to nature, in order to restore the old traditional way of baking wine in workshops as much as possible, and the operation process is intact and traditional manual production is preserved.
Several typical body wines, such as Maotai-flavor, mellow-sweet and cellar-bottom-flavor, with different rounds, different alcoholicity and different wine ages, that is, wine hook wine, are carefully blended without adding any chemical additives, and can be stored for more than five years before leaving the factory.
The series of high-grade "Wang Lifu" wines, such as "Wang Lifu Shaofang", "Wang Lifu Baojiao" and "Wang Lifu Laojiao", restore the original flavor of "wangmao" wine.
Wang Lifu family founded "Tian He Shao Fang" brewing in Daoguang period, and its skill has been passed down for six generations, lasting for more than 18 years. It is one of the oldest brewing families in Maotai Town with well-documented and orderly circulation.
"Wang Lifu is one of the well-documented founders of Moutai" (The Story of Maotai Liquor in China, edited by Chen Boshen, Guizhou People's Publishing House, 22, p. 392).
wangmao, the brewing family that once created the gold medal legend in Panama Expo, has experienced several ups and downs in the historical process, and "Maotai Town Wang Lifu Liquor Industry" will surely flourish in the hands of a generation of Wang Lifu descendants who have ideals, know how to manage and manage well, and brew high-quality pure handmade Maotai-flavor liquor.
To provide consumers with a higher level of spiritual enjoyment, reproduce the classic old taste of "wangmao" in Wang Lifu era, and make more contributions to society.
unchangeable blood inheritance, unchangeable craft taste and unchangeable value orientation.