Moutai to set up wine college

China’s most popular spirit brand, Moutai, wants to set up a college to teach wine-related science.
Already approved by the Ministry of Education, Moutai College will have five undergraduate programs, including wine-making, viticulture and enological engineering, food quality and safety, resource recycling sciences and marketing.
The college aims to enroll 5,000 students and will emphasize wine-related technologies, the media reports.
Moutai is a distilled spirit made from sorghum, wheat or rice. Dubbed China’s luxury spirit, it is a potent baijiu (白酒 white whine) with a history that dates back to the first century BC.
Its sales have slumped in recent years, largely because of China’s crackdown on corruption, which has cut the number of extravagant government receptions and gift exchanges.
In response, the company has been exploring other options, including going global to become the world’s top liquor brand.
Establishing Moutai College is expected to give the company a pool of professionals and a technological edge. It also could help Moutai to tap into the foreign market.
The drink is named after Moutai village in Guizhou province in China’s southwest, where liquor distillery has a long history.
Moutai has been named a national liquor in 1951. It has won many prestigious international and domestic awards, including gold medals at the Paris International Exposition in 1985 and 1986, and recognition at the San Francisco World’s Fair in 1915.