Grape wine was the wine of the oases. The Chinese histories name the vine and its wine in Dayuan and Anxi in the report of Zhang Qian. After them, they name it in Kang, Yanqi, Kucha and Gaochang.[1] They name no vine grown in the lands of the Xiongnu or the Göktürks.[2] A Roman envoy feasted in the camp of Istemi in 569, but he was served no grape wine. Menander gives the reason: the land bore no vine.[3] After its army destroyed Gaochang in 640, the Tang court made grape wine itself. According to the Cefu yuangui, the capital then tasted it for the first time.[4]

Dayuan and Anxi

The oldest notice is the report that Zhang Qian brought home to Emperor Wu of Han. Dayuan is usually identified with Ferghana. Of Dayuan he said that its people were settled, farmed rice and wheat and had wine of the vine, 蒲陶酒.[5] He knew Anxi, which lay west of the Great Yuezhi, only by report. He described it in the same terms: settled people, rice and wheat, wine of the vine and towns like those of Dayuan.[5]

Sima Qian, the author of the Shiji, repeats the notice in his own account of the embassies that followed. He writes that the people on either side of Dayuan made wine of grapes. The rich stored ten thousand shi and more of it, which kept for decades without spoiling.[5] The people loved wine, as their horses loved alfalfa.[5] The Han Shu gives the notice in its own chapter on the western regions in nearly the same words. It adds that the land, climate, products and customs of Dayuan were those of the Great Yuezhi and of Anxi.[6] The two texts count as one witness, since the Han Shu follows the Shiji.[7]

Both histories tie the vine to the emperor’s wish for the horses of Dayuan. The Shiji says that Han envoys took the seeds of alfalfa and of the grape home. The emperor began to plant both in rich ground.[5] The heavenly horses became many, and foreign envoys came in numbers. Then the detached palaces and lodges were planted all round with grapes and alfalfa as far as the eye could see.[5] The Shiji names the envoys as the bringers, not Zhang Qian.[5] The Han Shu puts the planting after the Han war on Dayuan. The new king Chanfeng agreed to give two heavenly horses a year. Then, the Han Shu says, Han envoys gathered the seed of grape and alfalfa and came home with it. The emperor planted more of both beside the palaces.[6] Neither history says that Zhang Qian or the envoys taught the Chinese to make wine. They speak of planting.[8]

Ban Gu sums up the reign of Wu and counts the grape with the horse among the things that drew the emperor west. Having heard of the heavenly horses and the grape, he opened the road to Dayuan and Anxi.[6] A palace of the Shanglin park bore the name Grape Palace. In 1 BC the court lodged the chanyu of the Xiongnu there during his visit.[9] The Han Shu does not say how the palace got its name.[9] The vines planted beside the palaces are a probable reason.[10]

Yanqi, Kucha and Gaochang

The Zhou Shu was presented in 636. It says of Yanqi, the Karashahr of today, that its people favoured wine of grapes and loved music.[11] The Wei Shu chapter on the western regions has the same sentence.[12] That chapter was restored in the Song period from the Bei Shi and mixes in sentences of the Zhou Shu and the Sui Shu. It therefore adds no second witness.[12] The Han Shu lists the grape among the fruit of Qiemo, of Nandou and of Jibin. It says of the people of Jibin that they were fond of drink and food.[6]

Of Kucha the Jiu Tang Shu says that grape wine was plentiful. Rich houses stored several hundred 碩 of it.[13] The Xin Tang Shu lists the grape among the crops of Kucha and of Yanqi.[14] On his way west, Xuanzang found grapes and pomegranates there, as the Record of the Western Regions has it.[15] The Sui Shu describes the Kucha of the Sui years. It lists rice, millet, pulse and wheat among its products, then metals and horses, and no grape.[16] A report on the campaign against Kucha in 384 is cited for rich families that stored up to a thousand hu of wine at home.[17]

Gaochang, the kingdom of the Turfan depression, is the best documented. The Liang Shu was presented in 636. It says that Gaochang produced fine horses, wine of the vine and rock salt. In the Datong era, its king Zijian sent the Liang court grapes among other gifts.[18] The Sui Shu says that Gaochang had much wine of the vine.[16] The Jiu Tang Shu says that its soil was fertile and that grain and wheat ripened twice a year. It says that Gaochang had wine of the vine and suited the five fruits.[13] The grapes of Gaochang had thus reached a Chinese court about a century before the Tang took the oasis.[18]

To the east of Gaochang, the Hou Han Shu says that the land of Yiwu suited the five grains, mulberry, hemp and the grape.[19] The Liang Shu says that the land of Khotan suited rice, wheat and the grape.[18]

Kang and Chach

The Hou Han Shu says of 栗戈, a country under Kangju, that it produced fine horses, cattle, sheep and grapes among other fruit. Its water was good, so that its grape wine was especially famous.[19] Of Kang, the country of Samarkand in Sogdiana, the Sui Shu says that it had much wine of the vine. Rich families laid up a thousand shi of it, which kept for years.[16] The Wei Shu chapter has the same sentence with ten shi.[12] That text shares much of its wording with the Sui Shu, which gives the larger figure.[20] The Tang Huiyao says that grape wine was common among the customs of Kang. The Xin Tang Shu says that its people loved drink and sang and danced in the roads.[21] A Sogdian leader of Kang, Kang Yandian, is said to have founded a colony south of the Lop Nor in the early seventh century. One of its towns was called the Town of the Grape, because the vine was planted inside it.[17]

Xuanzang travelled on the road west from Suyab. He passed Nujikant, a country of rich fruit where grapes were abundant and prized, some two hundred li short of Chach.[22] The Sui Shu, the Tang Huiyao and the Xin Tang Shu name no wine for Chach itself, the Tashkent oasis.[23] A later gazetteer is cited for the statement that wine was a favourite drink there.[24]

The western khan received the pilgrim at Suyab. There Xuanzang records that the soil suited millet and grapes.[15] The towns west of Suyab each had a lord of their own and were subject to the Göktürks.[14] Tong Yabgu gave a feast during the pilgrim’s visit. At this feast, the envoys drank wine, and the pilgrim was given grape juice.[25]

Gaochang and the Tang court

The army of Hou Junji destroyed Gaochang in 640, and the Tang made it the prefecture of Xizhou.[13] The Cefu yuangui records in its entry for 647 what the emperor took from the oasis.[26] After the destruction of Gaochang, it says, the emperor had the fruit of the mare-nipple grape, 馬乳蒲桃, planted in the palace park. He also obtained the method of making its wine.[26][27] He altered the method himself, and the wine came out in eight kinds, fragrant, sharp and strong.[26] He gave it to his officials, and the capital learned its taste for the first time.[26]

The same entry shows the emperor’s interest in the plants of foreign countries. In the third month of 647, gifts of rare fruit and plants came in from distant lands. He ordered that each be recorded in detail.[26] A Yabgu, whom the entry does not name, sent a cluster of the mare-nipple grape more than two zhang long. It was purple in colour and had rather large berries.[26][27]

In the first month of the same year, the court gave the banquet of the wine fountain for the Uyghur and Tiele chiefs.[28] The Xin Tang Shu says that wine welled up from a hidden spring into a silver jar. It names no grape and no other ingredient.[29]

Grape wine and the steppe

The Roman envoys of 569 were entertained for two days in the camp of Istemi on the Ektag.[3] According to Menander, they drank no wine like the Romans’, pressed from the grape. The land did not support the vine, and the plant was not native there. They drank their fill of another kind of sweet wine.[3] The other wine has been taken for kumys. This is held unlikely by those who propose mead or rice wine, and beer has been proposed as well.[30] Menander’s remark has also been explained from the land. The vine does not grow on the Mongolian steppe, and its culture belongs to a settled life.[31] The Wei Shu says that the Gaoche, the Tiele of the later histories, had no grain and made no wine.[32] The grain drinks of the steppe are the subject of millet beer.

The grape drinks served at the courts of the western khans probably came from farm country under their overlordship.[33]

The name of the vine

The Chinese histories write the vine 蒲陶, and the same chapters also write 蒲萄 and 蒲桃. The Shiji has both 蒲陶 and 蒲萄 in one chapter. The Zhou Shu and the Cefu yuangui have 蒲桃.[34] The word has been explained in two ways. One explanation takes it for a word of Ferghana, from an Iranian source, that reached China with the plant. The other derives it from Greek botrys and ties the spread of the vine in Central Asia to Greek rule.[35] The Turkic word üzüm, it has been argued, proves nothing for the early history, since it may first have meant any berry.[31] Other scholars take the Turkic word bor, “grape wine”, from Sogdian and call it a word of culture that the Uyghurs spread. In their account the word üzüm first stands in Turkic writings in the Uyghur age.[36] In Old Uyghur texts the vineyard is borluk. The Uyghurs set bag, borlug and tarig, garden, vineyard and field, apart as places of planting. The word bag itself came in later, through the Sogdian and Tajik neighbours.[37] Some of the documents are late, as late as the age of the Mongol state of Genghis Khan.[38]

Every notice above was written by an outsider to the steppe: a Chinese historian, a Chinese pilgrim or a Greek historian. Each places the vine in farm country with towns.

References

  1. ^ Shiji, juan 123; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  2. ^ Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  3. ^ a b c Menander Protector; Blockley 1985, fr. 10.3, p. 121
  4. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 970; Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Shiji, juan 123
  6. ^ a b c d Han Shu, juan 96
  7. ^ Han Shu, juan 96; Shiji, juan 123
  8. ^ Shiji, juan 123; Han Shu, juan 96
  9. ^ a b Han Shu, juan 94
  10. ^ Han Shu, juan 94; Han Shu, juan 96
  11. ^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
  12. ^ a b c Wei Shu, juan 102
  13. ^ a b c Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 198
  14. ^ a b Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  15. ^ a b Record of the Western Regions, juan 1
  16. ^ a b c Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83
  17. ^ a b Laufer 1919, p. 222
  18. ^ a b c Liang Shu, juan 54
  19. ^ a b Hou Han Shu, juan 88
  20. ^ Wei Shu, juan 102; Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83
  21. ^ Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 99; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  22. ^ Record of the Western Regions, juan 1; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  23. ^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 83; Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 99; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221
  24. ^ Laufer 1919, p. 221
  25. ^ Life of Xuanzang, juan 2
  26. ^ a b c d e f Cefu yuangui, juan 970
  27. ^ a b Laufer 1919, p. 232
  28. ^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 198; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  29. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  30. ^ Blockley 1985, p. 264
  31. ^ a b Laufer 1919, p. 233
  32. ^ Wei Shu, juan 103
  33. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 221; Record of the Western Regions, juan 1
  34. ^ Shiji, juan 123; Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50; Cefu yuangui, juan 970
  35. ^ Laufer 1919, p. 225–226
  36. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 326, 328
  37. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 328–329
  38. ^ Ögel 2000, p. 329

Sources

Literature

  • Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica. Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran (1919)
  • R. C. Blockley, The History of Menander the Guardsman: Introductory Essay, Text, Translation, and Historiographical Notes (1985)
  • Bahaeddin Ögel, Türk Kültür Tarihine Giriş II: Türklerde ziraat kültürü (2000)

Related

What links here12

Persons
Zhang Qian
Battles & Events
The embassy of Zemarchos, 569 · Xuanzang's visit to Tong Yabgu
Places
Ferghana · Gaochang · Kucha · Sogdiana · Suyab
Peoples
History of the Turkic peoples · Sogdians
Customs & Pastimes
Culture of the Turkic Peoples · The Göktürk Feast

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Grape Wine in Central Asia.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/foods/grape-wine/

Last revised: 8 November 2026