Osmanthus Wine / Gui Hua Niang

Explosive flowers!

I was in China recently and on the way back, guess what my luggage was filled with? Food and drinks, of course! And one specimen is this Osmanthus Wine or in Chinese, Gui Hua Niang.

I opened it, closed my eyes and sipped a bit.

I was back at Peppa’s lab. If you have not met Peppa, she is one of the world’s top food scientist. Plus, she happens to have invented a food fusion machine that can create new food instantly by shooting the ingredients at each other at high speed. You can read about her previous experiment here.

“What are we making today?”, Peppa asked me.

“Let’s try to recreate this Osmanthus Wine. Try mixing osmanthus flower and water.”, I replied.

Peppa placed some osmanthus flower and water in the individual compartments of the machine. Then, she pressed the red button.

Whoosh! Bang!

I tasted the liquid from the explosion.

“Hmm… Doesn’t taste the same.”, I said.

Peppa started to read the ingredients on the box. Suddenly, she clicked her fingers and said, “Of course! How can you make wine from mixing water? I may be good, but I’m not God!”.

She replaced the water with some Chinese rice wine. She pressed the red button again.

Whoosh! Bang!

I had a sip. Mmm… This tastes better. The first thing that hits my senses was the fragrance of the osmanthus flowers. For those who have not tasted osmanthus, it’s a little flower that is very fragrant. It reminds me of elderflower, although the smell and taste is different.

Back to the drink. After the fragrance of the osmanthus, the taste of the rice wine followed. The rice wine is very mild and slightly sweet, so it would still please those that do not like the taste of rice wine.

“This is good Peppa. Another successful fusion.”, I told Peppa.

She smiled at me. It’s the same mysterious smile as the last one.

I bought this using my own money from Suzhou, China.