Great Warriors of Sui and Tang Dynasties

Chapter 297 Returning to Yi
Laba.

Luo Cheng led [-] county soldiers to evacuate Tongding City and went to the former site of Xiangping City at the foot of Wulu Mountain in the west of the city.There has become a big construction site, and tens of thousands of civilians are stepping up to build the city in the cold wind.

The city hasn't been built yet, and there are messy large construction sites everywhere, but Luo Cheng doesn't care. There are tens of thousands of troops from Luo Yi and Song Laosheng by the Liaohe River, and there are Tongding City and Liaobian Fort each with 3000 people in front. , Even if there is no city here, there is no need to worry about the Goguryeo people calling.

What's more, the Linshuo Palace in Zhuojun has already issued an imperial edict that on the first day of the first month of the eighth year of Daye, the East Expedition Army of more than one million gathered in Zhuojun will officially send troops.At this time, the Goguryeo people were thinking about how to strengthen the Liaohe defense line, instead of running here to act wildly.

The corner of the Xincheng construction site is where Luo Cheng's [-] soldiers are stationed, and the other [-] soldiers are still stationed in Liaoze in the south of Tongding City. If this bastard doesn't play his cards according to the routine, he will know about it as soon as he leaves the city, and he can take precautions early.

Wei Zheng followed Luo Cheng and turned eastward and westward, and suddenly his nose twitched and he became energetic.

He smelled wine, and it was a unique wine fragrance.

He glanced at Luo Cheng who was leading the way.

In the corner of the camp, a dusty flag was hung. In the cold winter months, a group of men were busy working in only thin clothes, even sweating on their heads.

Fog rose everywhere.

As soon as Luo Cheng came in, he looked around, asked a few words here, and explained a few words there, he was very familiar.Wei Zheng exclaimed, "Unexpectedly, the general is still brewing wine? Is this preparing for the New Year?"

Luo Cheng looked down at the fineness of a bowl of wine, and said that the fineness was not enough.Then he smiled and said, "This wine is not brewed for the Chinese New Year to drink, it is sold."

"Sell?"

Wei Zheng's eyes widened.

"You should be familiar with this wine. You can smell it and you will know it is the white wine I gave you earlier. This wine is strong. In this cold place like Liaodong, taking a sip or two will refresh your whole body. In the Central Plains, you can There are not many people who are used to my wine, but here in Liaodong, there are quite a few people who like this wine."

"Don't look at my wine shop, but do you know how popular our wine is now? Needless to say, the first army and the second army have made a lot of reservations. Even the merchants in Huaiyuan City are queuing up. Especially those barbarians love our wine even more than tea."

Wei Zheng frowned and said, "But I'm afraid it's inappropriate to use military rations to make wine and sell it?"

Luo Cheng smiled and said, "I'm not using military rations to make wine. Look at what these are?"

Wei Zheng looked down carefully, looked at the distiller's grains on the floor, it wasn't glutinous rice or wheat millet, "Is this sorghum?"

"Yes, this is sorghum. We bought sorghum from Huaiyuan. This sorghum is only for feeding livestock. It is very cheap. We bought sorghum from merchants in Huaiyuan, and then pulled it here to brew wine. The sorghum became clear. Liquor, resold and sold, do you know how much profit this resells?"

Wei Zheng shook his head.

"For ordinary wine making, one catty of glutinous rice can produce one and a half catties of wine, which is good wine. If it is for sale, one catty of glutinous rice can produce two catties or even two and a half catties of wine. If it is bad wine sold in the store, Add some water, and a catty of rice can actually produce three or four catties of wine."

Glutinous rice is more expensive than ordinary rice, but wine is more expensive than rice, so wine making has always been a high profit.Not to mention those well-known and famous wines, such as Xinfeng wine, which can even sell for tens of thousands of wines, and the best glutinous rice is only a few tens of dollars a bucket.

"Food in the frontier is more expensive. The sorghum for livestock is only four or five yuan a bucket in the Central Plains, but here in Huaiyuan, it can also be sold for twenty yuan a bucket. I collect sorghum for twenty yuan, and the merchants still pay for it. Send it here from Huaiyuan for me, and then I will use this sorghum to make baijiu, I have a secret recipe for making liquor, and one catty of sorghum can produce eight taels of wine."

Half a catty, Wei Zheng felt that this sorghum wine was much lower than water wine, but half a catty of sorghum wine was not bad.The key lies in the price, how much the price sells determines the profit.

"Taste." Luo Cheng poured out a small bowl of wine from a small jar and handed it to Wei Zheng.

Wei Zheng, who is good at wine, can be called a drunkard, and he is also a master wine maker. Their Wei family's home brew is very good.He took the bowl and took a sip. The wine was fragrant and strong.

"Compared to the wine you gave me before, it seems to have a weaker taste, but more punch." Wei Zheng said.

"Sure enough, you are an old drunkard. This baijiu has a characteristic, that is, it needs to be stored after brewing. The longer it is stored, the mellower the taste and the better the taste. The new wine has a poor taste."

"It's almost, but it tastes good to drink this white wine today." Wei Zheng licked his lips, his face was already slightly red. "How much does this wine sell for?"

"Four hundred wine fights."

"Big fights and small fights?" Wei Zheng asked.

There are big fights and small fights, one big fight and three small fights.

"Wine, of course it's a small bucket, it's a convention, it's not a big bucket for rice."

Now Wei Zheng blushed even more, a small bucket of wine sold for four hundred dollars?
Luo Cheng chuckled, although wine is made from grain, it has never been a cheap thing.In the Sui Dynasty, a large bucket was equivalent to [-] milliliters in later generations, and a small bucket was equivalent to [-] milliliters.

A small bucket of baijiu is actually two kilograms, and Luo Cheng sells it for four hundred yuan. In fact, he sets the price according to the price of one hundred yuan per catty in later generations.One hundred coins per catty, in fact, it can only be regarded as middle and low-end baijiu for future generations.

But Wei Zheng didn't think that way. Luo Cheng bought a bucket of sorghum for [-] renminbi, which was still a big bucket, but sold it for [-] yuan for a small bucket, which is equivalent to a sixty-fold increase.

No wonder Luo Cheng dared to brew wine in the military camp. The profit was sixty times that of selling arms.

"How much wine do you drink a day?" Wei Zheng asked again.

"It's only a few hundred dollars a day."

Hundreds of buckets?Wei Zheng quickly calculated in his mind, one dou is [-] renminbi, a hundred dou is [-] renminbi, and a few hundred dou is more than [-] renminbi.

As for the cost, it is almost negligible.

"The main reason is that the distiller's koji is more troublesome. I use my homemade secret distiller's koji for this wine. I brought a batch before, but the quantity was too small. Now I purchase raw materials to rush the production, but it can't keep up with the demand, which greatly limits the capacity of our distillery. Wine production." Luo Cheng felt a little regretful.

He has enough manpower now, and the supply of sorghum is also sufficient. If the distiller's yeast can't keep up, let alone hundreds of buckets a day, a thousand buckets of wine a day will not be a problem.

Wei Zheng was more concerned about another issue.

Luo Cheng brews wine in the military camp, or uses auxiliary soldiers to brew wine, so who owns the money earned?
"The income from brewing wine is naturally our county soldier's small treasury. My brothers followed me here by the Liaohe River in the freezing cold. They couldn't go back to their homes. They had to be outside during the Chinese New Year. It was very hard. I have to find some benefits for everyone. For the money earned from wine making, we will buy more winter clothes for everyone, give them some rewards, and ask them to send some money home to their wives, children, and parents for the New Year.”

Wei Zheng looked at Luo Cheng and felt that this man was too young, but sometimes the things in his mind made him admire.Ordinary people have this secret method of brewing wine, and they must make the most of their money. It would be good to share some soup with the sergeants.But what Luo Cheng wants to make money is to improve the food and treatment of the soldiers under his command, buy them winter clothes, quilts, shoes and socks, and give them rewards so that they can send money home.

"The first army and the second army also came to buy our wine, so General Roja and the others also know about this?"

Wei Zheng directly called this wine our wine.

"Of course we know about this, but we didn't go too far in doing this. Who doesn't want to do some small business? After all, there are so many brothers under him, and they have to live." Luo Cheng told Wei Zheng with a smile. Luo Yi and Song Laosheng both Knowing that he sells alcohol here, they still order high-end liquor from him.

"Is this wine divided into high and low grades?"

"Of course there are points. This wine is not all the same when it is brewed. The head of the wine is the strongest and the taste is the worst. The tail of the wine is the weakest and the taste is slightly inferior. The best is the wine from Erguotou, which has the purest taste. , not miscellaneous. So, we divided the wine into different grades. Erguotou wine sells Doujiu for [-] yuan, and then mixes the head wine and tail wine to neutralize the taste, and then sells Doujiu for [-] yuan. In addition, we From this Erguotou wine, it is purified and filtered, and then it is accumulated and stored in a cellar, and then some high-end exquisite packaging is made, so it is sold for [-] yuan for Doujiu, and there is also a more luxurious gift version. Two hundred dollars, this kind of wine I sell for a thousand dollars."

Wei Zheng cast his eyes on the ground in admiration, "It's a pity that you don't become a businessman."

"Being a businessman is not as good as being an official." Luo Cheng laughed.

Luo Cheng approached Huaiyuan businessman to order a special batch of gift boxes. For example, the wine he sent to Luo Yi, Song Laosheng, and Li Jing was a limited edition priced at [-] yuan.A jar is just a bucket of wine. The wine jars are all made of high-quality white porcelain bottles produced in Xingjiao, Hebei Province. There is a gift box made of sandalwood on the outside. Someone wrote a poem on the box, and a set of white porcelain wine glasses is also attached. Very compelling.

Anyway, the old guys like Luo Yi, Li Jing, and Song were very satisfied after receiving the wine.Regarding Luo Cheng's brewing, everyone turned a blind eye and gave the green light.

They even went to Luocheng to buy a lot. For example, Song Laosheng got a discount from Luocheng and bought a lot of high-end five hundred yuan a bucket of liquor. Except for some of them to give away, most of them were He sold it to the Khitan people and Xi people in the north to make a lot of money. Luo Cheng knew it very well, but he didn't tell the truth at all, and he would give as much as he wanted.

"Except for the capital, we still have a winery over the Liao Bian Fort here, brewing wine day and night, and now it has earned [-] to [-] yuan."

The revenue from wine production is thousands of dollars a day, but it is a real money-making business.

"It's almost Chinese New Year, and each of the six thousand brothers from our county soldiers has to be rewarded with a few bucks." Luo Cheng said with a smile.He intends to have a minimum of five per person, and the officers will be increased according to their grades. In this way, it will be at least [-] to [-] guan, and he still has so many civilians and auxiliary soldiers who follow him. These people must also be rewarded , Even if one person is consistent, it will cost ten to twenty thousand.

"It's true that money comes in like flowing water and goes out like flowing water. The general doesn't love money, but he loves soldiers like sons." Wei Zheng said.

"They are all brothers who follow me, this is a must."

Wei Zheng felt that Luo Cheng was really capable of accomplishing great things.

"Old Wei, I brought you here today, mainly because I want to entrust you with the business of this stall. The business of the wine shop is not small, and it is also related to the welfare of the [-] to [-] brothers of our county soldiers, so it is very important. There are quite a few fierce generals, but if you say that you will be powerless to take care of these things, I'd better leave it to you to rest assured."

Wei Zheng was also not polite, "Don't worry, general, we will take care of it and make sure the accounts are clear."

Ximen Junyi strode in.

"Father, Dou Jiande is back."

(End of this chapter)