Baijiu basics: Get to know the world’s most valuable spirit

You’d be forgiven for not knowing that the world’s most valuable spirits brand is the Chinese baijiu producer Moutai. In fact, according to the Brand Finance report Alcoholic Drinks 2025, Moutai’s brand value is roughly equal to that of the top 10 spirits brands combined – a list that includes only four non-baijiu brands: Hennessy, Jack Daniel’s, Bacardi and Johnnie Walker.

In 2025, Moutai’s brand value alone was estimated at $58.4 billion, placing it 20th in the Global 500 rankings alongside companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Google, as listed in the Global 500 2025 report by Brand Finance.

Defined as a white spirit, baijiu is a category that remains remarkably underexamined and widely misunderstood. It is among the earliest distilled alcohols in the world, dating to the Ming Dynasty of 1368-1644; making China home to the world’s oldest continuously operating distillery – Luzhou Laojiao – founded in 1573. Yet despite these facts, baijiu remains little known outside China.

The baijiu champion

To understand why baijiu has remained so obscure internationally, it’s necessary to grasp the complexity of the category itself. Few people understand this better than Ben Salguero, a UK baijiu specialist and owner of Jaded Dragon bar in Bristol, home to Europe’s largest collection of baijiu.

Salguero has dedicated his career to bringing baijiu to Western consumers and educating them about the spirit, which he describes as ‘unlike anything else’ and predicts is ‘heading towards its heyday’, much as rum and tequila have over the past decade.

‘It’s bizarre that it’s 2026 and there’s this whole category of alcohol that is still unknown to most of the world,’ he says.

Understanding baijiu

Baijiu, commonly distilled from a cereal grain called sorghum, is the national drink of China and has 12 recognised styles, each distinct in production and character. The four principal ‘aroma’ categories are strong, light, rice and sauce.

Strong-aroma baijiu is associated with tropical fruit notes such as guava and pineapple, alongside unexpected flavours like bubble-gum. Sauce-aroma baijiu is deeply savoury and food-driven, with characteristics reminiscent of dark chocolate, Marmite and soy sauce.

Light-aroma baijiu commonly displays flavours of sesame, white chocolate, bell pepper and even Brussels sprouts. Rice-aroma baijiu, by contrast, can be likened to distilled sake, offering notes of seaweed, melon and gentle salinity.

For drinkers familiar with high-ester rum, baijiu can be understood through a similar lens. Rum contains a complex range of volatile compounds, with up to 184 distinct compounds identified. Sauce-aroma baijiu, by comparison, contains more than 500.

A matter of taste

‘That’s the intensity of flavour, the tasting is exciting. You’re tasting a memory, in a very romantic sense,’ says Salguero. ‘When we taste distilled alcohol – not whisky, where wood plays a role, but white spirits – we are tasting the esters carried through distillation,’ he explains.

‘Fundamentally, they come from fatty acids created during the fermentation of the original food source. Those acids themselves don’t have flavour, but when they hit your tongue, your brain recognises them. It recalls something you’ve tasted before. In that way, you are quite literally tasting memory at its core.’

Salguero says his customers’ reactions to baijiu have been largely positive, with the greatest resistance surprisingly coming from bartenders, many of whom express a ‘fear’ towards the category.

Meanwhile the general public are more open-minded. ‘Even if they decide they don’t like it, they’re still willing to try,’ says Salguero.

Brands and bottles

In the UK, more accessible baijiu brands include Ming River, known for its approachable and fruity profile, and Moutai, characterised by its intense savoury and nutty flavour. One persistent challenge, however, is labelling.

‘If you can’t read Chinese, you often don’t know what you’re buying,’ Salguero explains. ‘The bottles are very traditional. I’ll pick up a bottle I’ve never seen before and won’t know anything about it.’

This is why specialist bars such as Jaded Dragon play a crucial role. Traditionally, baijiu is drunk neat in small 15ml ganbei cups. However, Salguero believes cocktails are key to its Western adoption.

In this sense, baijiu occupies a unique position in the global spirits landscape. ‘It is simultaneously an ancient and a new spirit,’ says Salguero. Although obscure outside China, the category may now be entering a new phase of global recognition.