Matsu aged wine is born of a dance between time and microbes. The traditional method uses glutinous rice, which is soaked, steamed, and cooled, then mixed with red yeast rice and well water and left to ferment slowly in the low, steady cold of winter. Matsu's winter temperatures of around ten degrees Celsius are ideal for the red yeast rice and yeast to work, gradually saccharifying and coloring the grains into a wine tinged red or amber. The wine is then steamed to "sterilize it through the summer," jarred, and aged for several months to a year, deepening to a rich amber and turning mellow and soft-without the fierce bite of kaoliang, offering instead a substantial body layered with faint notes of dried fruit and rice.

Aged wine is deeply rooted in the daily life and life-rhythms of the Matsu people. In the old days, fishermen would drink a bowl before heading out to sea, to warm themselves against the sea wind; women in postpartum confinement would have misua (thin wheat noodles) fried in aged wine, paired with a fried egg and seasoned with red fermented rice, forming the signature "month of confinement" nourishing custom. Aged wine is used widely in cooking and is a core element of Fuzhou cuisine-dishes such as aged-wine egg, aged-wine chicken, and aged-wine misua, along with red fermented rice chicken, red fermented rice eel, and red fermented rice pork, showing a savory, faintly sweet, gentle and mellow flavor; it is also often used to braise seafood, cutting fishiness and lifting freshness so that fish and shellfish taste all the sweeter. These dishes are not only everyday tastes but carry the dietary wisdom of festivals and of tending the body. During the Warzone Administration period, when supplies were scarce, home-brewed aged wine became an important medium for sustaining family bonds and sharing human warmth.

From Home-Brew Jars to Tunnel Cellars

Matsu aged wine has endured to this day thanks to the meeting of a folk brewing tradition and a modern industry. In the past, every household had its wine jars, and the period around Minor Snow and the Winter Solstice was the peak season for home-brewing aged wine, when neighbors would compare the color of their red yeast rice and the character of their wine. Over time, the Matsu Distillery systematized and commercialized the craft, making aged wine a signature local industry of Matsu.

It is worth noting that the Matsu Distillery's predecessor was the "Zhongxing Distillery," set up in March 1956 by the Matsu Warzone Administration Committee and renamed the Matsu Distillery only in 1970; it belonged to the Matsu warzone-administration system and was not part of the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau. That said, in the 1980s some of its wines or bulk base spirits circulated through the monopoly system, which easily led people to assume Matsu wine was a monopoly product. On another front, private brewing was legally banned during the Warzone Administration period, yet aged wine was already so deeply rooted in household life that a few residents quietly kept up their ancestral red-yeast brewing methods, carrying the craft on under the constraints of the system.

Today, the distillery has joined hands with tourism, opening its process to visitors, offering guided tours of its tunnel wine-storage spaces and tasting experiences, so visitors can grasp the full journey of aged wine from brewing to maturation. Some sites also feature cultural exhibition halls introducing the craft of red yeast rice and the region's wartime history, making aged wine a gateway to understanding Matsu's society and culture. The Cultural Affairs Department of the Lienchiang County Government has also quoted the poem "Matsu Aged Wine Is Fine," by Chen Kao-chih and Chen Hui-jong, to promote it: "A cool wind, silvergrass, wormwood, and chrysanthemums in bloom; the aged-wine jars open, and a thousand homes turn fragrant."

Visiting settlements such as Qinbi today, one can still see the scene of a life where traditional stone houses and the fragrance of wine intertwine. Aged wine today is not just a drink but a concrete embodiment of Matsu's land, food, and memories of human warmth.

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