If someone asked you what the most popular spirit in the world was, you'd probably say whiskey, right?
 
And you'd be right, generally speaking; but in one small particular, you'd also be dead wrong. The world's most-consumed spirit is, in fact, baijiu, the Chinese national spirit, with around 11 billion liters consumed each year.
 
 
To place that figure in context, the best-selling international whisk(e)y is Johnnie Walker, with worldwide sales of around 170 million liters. The second highest seller, Jack Daniel's, sells around 120m liters. Baijiu outsells their combined total almost 40-fold.
 
Its name translates as "white wine" but it's a high-alcohol spirit. Chinese people will generally drink Baijiu with food, rather than on its own. It can be consumed either at room temperature or slightly warmed, and is served in a ceramic jug or modern clear-glass bottles. Traditionally, it is consumed as a shot, rather than sipped.
 
Baijiu has an important place in Chinese culture, despite the growing thirst for Western wines and spirits in China. It has been produced and consumed there since ancient times and has become an integral part of Chinese social events. And it is this cultural presence that has sparked a huge upsurge in interest in one brand of baijiu in particular.
 
Louzhou Laojiao Guojiao 1573, a moutai-style ("strong flavor") spirit has been the breakout star for baijiu, storming up our search rankings as more people try to find a bottle.
 
The sudden upsurge in searches came to our attention due to their sheer volume in January, a hugely important month in Chinese culture, marking the Lunar New Year. Normally, searches for baijiu peak in January but, starting last year, there has been a spectacular surge in searches, driven by the Guojiao 1573.
 
A global phenomenon
In 2015, baijiu searches hit 1150 in January, a modest total that reflects both less-frequent use of Wine-Searcher in China back then, and the fact that most Chinese consumers already knew where to get hold of their favorite bottle. 2016 saw that figure almost double to 2028, while 2017 was just shy of 3000 searches for the month of January. By 2018, that had doubled again, hitting 6000 searches, a reflection of increased Wine-Searcher penetration in China.
 
Then, last year, things went nuts. Baijiu searches hit 43,000 and last month the figure had climbed to more than 44,000 – for comparison, Johnnie Walker Black Label had 27,000 searches and Jack Daniel's just 5000. And all that increase is down to the Guojiao 1573; it accounts for around 80 percent of all baijiu searches.
 
The baijiu is made by China's oldest continuously operating distillery – 1573 is the date it was founded, during the Ming dynasty – and the facility is a nationally listed historical site, d in Luzhou in the southwestern province of Sichuan. The flagship bottling has an average price tag of $195 a bottle and was only available in China until 2012, when it became available in neighboring Southeast Asian markets. It went global in 2018 and the Chinese New Year celebrations helped to propel it from an initial ranking in the low 120,000s in April that year to being the 22nd most searched-for wine or spirit in the world by January 2019. It subsided into the 6000s before rallying last month to finish at #26 in our rankings.
 
What was intriguing about the searches for Guojiao 1573 was that the majority of them came not from China but the rest of the world. The majority came from the US (which reflects the preponderance of US users of Wine-Searcher), but Australia, Canada, Japan and Spain also proved fertile. With tens of millions of Chinese living overseas, Louzhou Laojiao has tapped into a valuable resource and the Guojiao 1573 is now available in a lot more countries, from Canada and the US to New Zealand and the Netherlands. Expect it to be in even more markets by next January.
 
Which all goes to show that you don't necessarily have to make a big noise to get noticed. And that if you're aiming for world domination – even for just one month of the year – it pays to have a ready-made audience to plug into.