Hongyingzi sorghum, Cabernet Sauvignon of China's Guizhou

Guizhou Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs

GUIYANG, China, July 3, 2025 /Xinhua-AsiaNet/--

In August every year, the two banks of the Chishui River are covered with rolling waves of ears of grain. The Hongyingzi sorghum, which grows all over the two banks of the river is an indispensable material for brewing high-quality sauce-flavored wine.

Guizhou Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs noted that currently, Guizhou has planted nearly 3 million mu (about 200,100 hectares) of the Hongyingzi sorghum. In Renhuai City alone, more than 50,000 households are involved in sorghum plantation, with an average annual income increase of over 15,000 yuan (about 2,088 U.S. dollars) per household. The Hongyingzi sorghum has become an important engine to achieve common prosperity in the region.

In Maotai Town, Renhuai City, southwest China's Guizhou Province, thousands of wineries begin to prepare for the new year's sorghum wine-making.

The sorghum here can tolerate poor soil, drought and diseases, and has firm and small grains, thick skins, high-content amylopectin and withstand multiple steaming and boiling, which makes the sauce-flavored wine in Maotai Town unproducible in other parts of China.

In recent years, with the development of Guizhou's wine-making industry, the Hongyingzi sorghum industry has become an important source of income for local people.

The city has united companies, cooperatives and farmers, providing farmers with free agricultural means of production, such as sorghum seeds, organic fertilizers, and biological agents. It ensures unified management, technical standards, farming practices, pest control, and harvesting and storage for sorghum production.

The companies purchase wine-making sorghum under order-oriented planting at protected prices, and implement policy-based insurance for ordered-oriented sorghum, allowing local people to share the benefits of industrial development.

Guizhou Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs noted that to improve production efficiency, local agricultural departments promote agricultural machinery suitable for mountainous areas and hire professional agricultural machinery service organizations to provide full-process mechanized services of plowing, planting, managing, harvesting, and storing for sorghum growers.

Source: Guizhou Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs