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Rice wine is an alcoholic beverage fermented from rice, traditionally consumed in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia, where rice is a quintessential staple crop. Rice wine is made by the fermentation of rice starch, during which microbes enzymatically convert polysaccharides to sugar and then to ethanol. The Chinese mijiu , Japanese sake, and Korean cheongju, dansul and takju are some of the most notable types of rice wine. Rice wine typically has an alcohol content of 10–25% ABV, and is typically served warm. One panel of taste testers arrived at 60 °C (140 °F) as an optimum serving temperature. Rice wines are drunk as a dining beverage in East Asian, Southeast Asian and South Asian cuisine during formal dinners and banquets, and are also used as cooking wines to add flavors or to neutralize unwanted tastes in certain food items (e.g. seafood such as fish and shellfish). The production of rice wine has thousands of years of history. In ancient China, rice wine was the primary alcoholic drink. The first known fermented beverage in the world was a wine made from rice and honey about 9,000 years ago in central China. In the Shang Dynasty (1750-1100 BCE), funerary objects routinely featured wine vessels. The production of rice wine in Japan is believed to have started around third century BCE, after the introduction of wet rice cultivation.

Source: Wikipedia