Jiuniang (Sweet Fermented Rice Wine)
Note Profile
About
Jiuniang is cooked glutinous rice fermented for one to three days with a qu starter and eaten as a sweet soupy dish. It is 1.5 to 2 percent alcohol and 0.5 percent lactic acid at the eating stage, so the boozy lift is small and a mild sourness runs with it.
Scent Profile
Jiuniang smells sweet first, a yeasty sweetness rising like an opened jar of fermented rice. A wine-like, faintly alcoholic lift runs behind it, small rather than strong. A mild sourness threads through from the fermentation, and a soft floral note sits alongside the sweetness. Underneath is the nutty smell of cooked glutinous rice itself, wet and sweetened rather than dry grain.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
ScentArt
Origin
A prepared Chinese dish, not a perfumery material. Glutinous rice is steamed, cooled and inoculated with jiuqu, a mixed yeast and mould starter, then left one to three days. The sugar comes from the mould converting rice starch, and the sourness from lactic fermentation, which is why both rise with time. Osmanthus is served with it as guihua jiuniang, but that is a garnish added afterwards and is not scored here.
Usage in Perfumery
Measured 2026-08-23: 6 Fragrantica placements, filed under Sweets and gourmand smells, and none on Parfumo. Use it as a gourmand ferment: sweeter and much weaker than any grape wine note, and starchier than sake. The published sake note is not a substitute. This is the mash, at a tenth of the alcohol, with no fruit named by anyone.
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