Contact with the sophisticated urban centers of the Islamic west and the Chinese south led to more varied drinking habits though apparently no less excessive. Ibn Battuta, traveling across the lands of the northern Golden Horde, was served at a religious feast during the holy month of Ramadan, "mare's milk [and] afterwards they brought bnza [fermented millet] and when the meal was done the Qur'an-readers recited with beautiful voices,"'" The Mongols drank rice mead, rice ale, honey mead (bal), fermented millet (btiza), as well as red grape wine, which Rubruck compared to the French wine La Rochelle. It was the Mongols who facilitated the popularity of grape wine to China. A colony of Muslim artisans originally from Samarqand settled in SImalT just north of Beijing, cultivated grapes, and provided wine for the imperial court throughout the thirteenth century. The Chinese introduced rice wine to the Persians, who called it tardsun. The Mongols drank both.
Friar Oderic of Pordenone, who traveled eastward between 1316 and 1330, noted the vast abundance of wine, known as bigni, in Kinsai (today's Hangzhou). It was said to resemble Rhenish wine in color, taste, and strength when kept for a year or so. This rice wine was made from rice first bruised and then compressed into cakes. These cakes were broken up and put into vessels with hot water where they were left to ferment. The wine produced could be made sweet or acidic and its color controlled with the addition of certain herbs during fermentation, and it was reputed to resemble grape wine in taste. In fact the word bigni used by Friar Oderic to describe the wine is said to be derived from the Persian bigini, which refers to malt liquor or beer. Hangzhou was famed for a date wine called Mi-yin or Bi-im.
World History
