Chapter 35: The Wine of the Song Dynasty Was Not for Human Consumption

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  "To be honest with you, old man, we do have better wines in our Taoist temple. However, brewing them is too much trouble and the price would naturally be extremely high. Selling this ordinary wine to these barbarians should be enough!"

  Zhang San deliberately made a look of sudden enlightenment, causing Wen Fei to secretly scold him as an old fox in his heart. However, he didn't know that he himself was the same, and almost every word that came out of his mouth was not true.

  "This is no ordinary wine, it would be enough to sell in Bianliang!" Zhang Sanweng praised: "I don't know if the noble sir has any intention of selling this wine elsewhere?"

  Wen Fei's face showed a look of difficulty, and he said: "It's not a big deal for small fights. But our wine is also privately sold in secret, if the government finds out, we can't afford to get punished!"

  Zhang San Weng showed a mysterious expression and said, "If your Taoist temple brews wine, I'll help sell it. Not to boast, but I have some connections with the government..."

  The meat has arrived, and Zhang San has been chatting with Wen Weng for half a day. This is exactly what I've been waiting for. Let Wen Fei sell the wine himself, he doesn't have that kind of skill. But if he can find an agent to help him sell it, that would be much better. Anyway, his wine has extremely low costs, so no matter how it's sold, it's a profit.

  Anything that is managed by the government will definitely have an exorbitant price. The wine of the Song Dynasty was also ordinary, and during the time when Yang Zhi's group bought a barrel of homemade village wine from Bai Sheng for 5 guan (a unit of currency), it was not even filtered clean, looking like a thick porridge-like liquid, yet it cost 5 guan. According to Wen Fei's observations over this period of time, it would be worth at least RMB 1,500. Of course, the prices in Huangmudang were definitely cheaper than those in Tokyo. Another reason might be that wine was a scarce commodity in Huangmudang at the time, and Bai Sheng had a monopoly on it, while Chai Gai's group was also bidding up the price, which drove up the price of this barrel of wine. However, one can imagine how high the profit margin of this wine was during the Song Dynasty! It's called profiteering, and it's not an exaggeration at all.

  A bucket of white wine should weigh about 20 kilograms, so one kilogram would be worth two or three hundred copper coins, which is around RMB 75.

  Wen Fei initially thought that the profit of several hundred times was exciting. But then he calculated, damn it, even if I travel through time and space to do this unique business, the profit is only this little. Those famous wines, which one doesn't sell for hundreds or thousands of yuan per bottle? The profit is higher than mine. Thinking of this, his heart couldn't help but feel a bit unbalanced.

  Then he chatted with Zhang Sanweng for a while, and Wen Fei was ashamed to learn that wine in the Song Dynasty was not sold by weight, but by volume.

  The "dou" and "shi" mentioned here are not the measuring instruments of stone, dou, sheng, but a kind of weighing vessel. This kind of stone dou is approximately equal to 92.5 Song jin in the Song Dynasty, while one shi is ten dou, which is 9.25 jin. Of course, this is just Wen Fei's private conversion, and he still uses the jin and liang of the Song Dynasty. As for how many kilograms one Song jin is equivalent to now... Wen Fei doesn't know. Selling at this standard, it's impossible to lose money, but you can't make much money either.

  Fortunately, in ancient times, there was a stone Dou, which was an ancient wine vessel and also a measuring instrument, specifically used for measuring quantities. According to the ancient system, one Shi was equal to ten Sheng, and one Sheng was equal to ten Jiao. The long-handled ladle (commonly known as "wine scoop") used by ancient wine sellers to scoop wine from the wine jar was called a "Jiao". So how heavy is this Shi? Generally speaking, it's around 32 catties. Using this measurement system, one "Dou" of wine is approximately over three catties.

  In this era, the price of wine is two or three hundred coins per dou, and that's for ordinary wine. As Zhang Sanweng would say, if you sell your wine at five or six hundred coins per dou, it's already too conscientious. When people buy it back, add water to it, and one jin can be exchanged for five or six jin to sell! So we must sell this wine for more than one yuan...

  Damn it's dark. Wen Fei originally thought he was already quite dark, but now he knows what a real scoundrel is like and realizes he's still far from being in the same league.

  In ancient times, people often shouted: "Shopkeeper, how much water have you mixed into your wine? It tastes like there's not a bit of alcohol in it and is as weak as a bird!"

  Now Wen Fei only knew that adding water to wine was actually an unspoken rule in the Song Dynasty's food and beverage industry... even the kind of thick rice porridge-like wine sold by peddlers last time, still had to be bought back and diluted with water before drinking? The alcohol content had a five or six degrees, seven or eight degrees were already very conscientious.

  Wen Fei's fifty-degree white wine was bought back by the Song Dynasty people, but in fact, they could still add ten times more water to it... Then what else would I sell? Why not just sell liquor directly?

  Two men were talking business, while the two groups of bandits had already finished fighting. Although blood and flesh were flying everywhere, no one was killed in the end. The defeated party was the Stone Mustache's bandit who came later, while the Hei Rock Department, which started to deal with Wen Fei, won a great victory. Suddenly excited to collect the spoils of war, knocking on the carriage, impatiently shouting: "You peddlers, you buyers, do you still want your money?"

  Wen Fei didn't react at first, calling himself. It wasn't until Zhang San Weng pushed Wen Fei that he came to his senses. It seems these northerners are still quite simple and trustworthy, Wen Fei had originally planned for them to directly move the wine and run away!

  "Wona Daoist, is there still wine and water? We and Yamabe have all been given some!" said a barbarian who seemed to be the leader, the same one who had just given Wen Fei a bag of gold sand.

  It turned out that he still wanted to buy wine, and I said how could he be so honest. Wen Fei secretly thought for a moment, then said: "My wine is naturally available, but the price is relatively high. You also saw how good this wine is..."

  Wen Fei wanted to haggle with the old woman selling melons, but that person simply didn't bother. He directly threw a dog-head gold ingot over, which hit Wen Fei's car with a "clang".

  This piece of dog head gold is about the size of a fist, with a purplish color. Obviously, the purity is not high, and it weighs only three or four catties. Not as much as gold sand... Wen Fei cursed in his heart, but his hands quickly put the dog head gold into his pocket.

  He smiled and said: "The wine will take two days to arrive, I have good things here, do you want them?"

  "What good things?" The man replied impatiently: "We just want cloth and wine..."

  Wen Fei quickly pulled out a large package wrapped in cowhide paper from the car, opened it and found that it was a bunch of snow-white candles. These barbarians were clearly not interested in these candles, and didn't even bother to take a look.

  The barbarians raised many cattle and sheep, with a large amount of oil and fat used to make torches and candles. Although the smell was a bit strong, they could still be used. These barbarians were not too particular about such things, so they naturally didn't have much interest in these candles.