Wine

[Benjamin Barrett]

Although I was referring originally strictly to "wine" (or "Chinese wine") not "rice wine," there is room for an expansion of the OED "rice wine" entry.

For one thing, there is a gap from 1894 to 2006 in citations. 

Also, the "rice wine" compound entry does not provide a definition. It says only:  "rice wine n.  [compare Portuguese vinho de arroz  (a1580 with reference to Japan, or earlier)]"

I'm not sure what a1580 means; it appears to be a source, but I cannot find it defined on the OED site or elsewhere. Perhaps this indicates that "rice wine" is a calque or suspected calque of "vinho de arroz."

"Vinho de arroz" does not appear elsewhere in the OED. As with English, the Portuguese Wikipedia entry (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinho_de_arroz) makes it clear that this "vinho de arroz" is not the same thing as wine ("Ao contrário do vinho, que é feito através da fermentação de uvas doces e outras frutas, o vinho de arroz resulta da fermentação do amido de arroz, que o converte em açúcares.")

In any case, as VS notes below, "rice wine" is not limited to the Japanese variety of alcohol, typically called "sake." (I've also seen sake referred to multiple times as "rice beer" to explain what sake is.) I suspect that the reason for using "rice wine" for "soju" is related to the use of "wine" for Chinese alcohol. In literature, for example, translators do not have a good choice of what to call this alcohol. "They sat down and drank alcohol/an alcoholic beverage" does not provide the natural flow that the word "wine" has, even though "wine" is misleading.

The OED has an entry on "shochu" but unlike most words, the word's origin is not explained. Both elements are borrowed from Chinese. shō = heat, bake (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%84%BC); chū = double-fermented wine, vintage wine (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%85%8E).

The OED does not have entries for the Korean "soju" or the Chinese "shaojiu," though both have a presence in English.

A danger of using "rice wine" for soju is that not all sojus are made from rice.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

On Dec 9, 2011, at 2:09 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:

> I can certainly attest that I've seen references to rice wine both in
> literature and in restaurant menus, referring to everything from sake to
> soju in Chinese, Japanese and Korean restaurants (but not Vietnamese or
> Thai, even though they have their own versions). On at least one
> occasion, I've seen sake identified as "rice beer". FDA has fairly
> strict categories of what qualifies as wine and beer in several
> different varieties, all determined by alcohol content. With beer, the
> content varies by category, but, once it's high enough, it becomes malt
> liquor, then barley wine (I believe, at 11% and above). Regular wine is
> generally cut off at about 15% because this is the upper limit of
> natural fermentation. Anything from 16-18% qualifies as fortified
> wine--I am not sure what the upper range is, but it's probably about
> 20-21%, not higher. Some of the beverages listed as "rice wine" had
> alcohol concentration of 35-40%, the equivalent of Western hard liquor.
> It is even more amusing to see menu contortions, trying to explain how
> "rice wine" is not really wine at all, but a distilled product.
> 
> VS-)
> 
> On 12/9/2011 1:54 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>> notes that the process used is different from both wine and beer, but closer to beer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sake).
>> 
>> The Wikipedia article on Chinese wine mentions discusses distillation; the word "wine" in English is certainly is used for both distilled and undistilled in Chinese contexts:
>> 
>> -----
>> The two main varieties of Chinese alcoholic beverages are fermented beverages (Chinese: 黃酒; pinyin: huáng jiǔ; literally "yellow liquor"), which may be clear, beige, or reddish-brown in color; and distilled beverage (Chinese: 白酒; pinyin: bái jiǔ; literally "white liquor"), which are usually clear liquids.
>> -----

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