Cassia wine
Cassia wine, osmanthus wine, or Kuei Hua Chen Chiew is an alcoholic Chinese drink, sometimes sweetened, produced from weak baijiu and flavored with sweet osmanthus flowers. It is distilled, but typically has an alcohol content less than 20%.
While the plant itself is sometimes associated with cinnamon, the blossoms' lactones impart a flavor closer to apricots and peaches.
Owing to the time at which Osmanthus fragrans flowers, 'cassia' wine is the traditional choice for the "reunion wine" drunk on the Mid-Autumn or Mooncake Festival. From the homophony between 酒 and , cassia wine is also a traditional gift for birthdays in China. It is also considered a medicinal wine in traditional Chinese medicine. Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica credits sweet osmanthus with "curing the hundred diseases" and "raising the spirit".
Within China, cassia wine is associated with Xi'an and Guizhou, but production now occurs throughout China, including Beijing and at the Hong Jiang Winery in Hunan.
Despite the name, the Chinese cassia tree is not used to flavor cassia wine. References to the osmanthus in Chinese literature and poetry are often translated as "cassia" because both trees were formerly known in China as .
