Your cart is currently empty!
On TCF’s second day, Kweichow Moutai moved the stage from the bustling gala back to a quiet, focused classroom — a systematic course for bartenders and hospitality professionals. Titled “The New Wave of Baijiu”, the open class broke down Chinese baijiu’s core knowledge system into professional, clear and reusable modules: from the principles and microbial spectrum of daqu solid-state fermentation to the framework of multi-round distillation and graded storage; from aroma-style identification and sensory training to how flavour language translates into structural variables of cocktail recipes. The goal was direct: help everyone understand Chinese baijiu within an actionable framework, and convert Moutai’s flavours into bar language and table language.
The course was taught by Alex Black, a Canadian internationally award-winning bartender, cocktail educator and drinks-industry professional. Alex holds a Spirits Level 3 diploma from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) and is a certified spirits educator, with industry certifications including the International Sommelier Guild, the Caribbean Rum and Spirits Producers’ Association and Tequila regulatory bodies. His expertise spans bar menus and cocktail design, drinks training, bar operations consulting, brand event planning and spirits education.
Alex loves conveying complex body structures, brewing mechanisms and flavour spectrums in ways that are “understandable, memorable and usable” for professionals and enthusiasts. He has previously hosted baijiu education classes and tastings at Vancouver’s LAOWAI bar. As lead instructor of this “New Wave of Baijiu” course, he hopes to translate baijiu’s structural language into the “cocktail grammar” familiar to bar and restaurant professionals — moving bartenders and brands from “curious experimenting” to “conscious creation”, and, by shaping baijiu’s bridge from “strange” to “touchable” before the public, making the dialogue between China’s Kweichow Moutai brand and the Canadian market more professional and welcoming.
The teaching started from major “aroma categories”: strong-aroma (daqu), light-aroma (xiaoqu), rice-aroma, sauce-aroma, feng-aroma and mixed-aroma. Likening them to six “scent runways” helped students quickly build reference points: which lean fruity and floral, which carry nutty-grain depth, which bear matured sauce-aroma layers. A clear framework then explained baijiu: from qu’s role and the daqu/xiaoqu difference, to how simultaneous fermentation and stone, mud or brick pits shape aroma, to how semi-solid distillation and pottery-jar ageing build a more three-dimensional palate.
Professional education is about attitude as much as skill. For restaurant and bar operators, the course also discussed telling Chinese baijiu’s story through menu narratives and spatial flow — extending training beyond the back bar to every touchpoint of brand communication and guest experience.
In the closing interactive session, students from diverse cultural backgrounds shared their creative inspirations: some echoed sauce-aroma’s warm depth with maple and roasted apple, others explored umami-nut resonance with seaweed and sesame, and still others built crisp linear profiles with cold-brew tea and lemon peel.
We saw clearly that professional education’s value lies not in giving one answer, but in offering an evolvable method and knowledge tools to sustain long-term creation: explaining flavour through ingredients and craft, designing recipes in structural language, communicating in everyday words. When a bartender understands this glass of Moutai deeply enough, it will naturally find its way into more Canadian glasses and onto more Canadian tables.
