China Place Liquor City

Wonderful variety the people are do warm snd helpful! Excellent place! They new the wines, they were able to come up with about 5 bottles for us and we loved them all! Thank you so much.

This place did indeed rock my world. It was sooo sleek, clean and modern!
As a tall, waifish Mary Poppins lookin’ white b*tch standing out like a sore thumb in Chinatown, I didn’t come expecting exceptional customer service. Touché. But I finally found another place in the city with a profound sake selection. Joong Boo was my boo before but has been replaced. Sorry Boo, you know I still love you!
As for Chinese liquor, I’m at a loss but definitely intrigued. And now I know where to go!

This is a great liquor store in the Chinatown Mall. Love the selection and the unique flavors of sake they have including Coconut Lemongrass, Asian Pear and Lychee. Beautiful interior and prices are very reasonable. I’m taking a star away because I don’t like how the staff follow you and watch your every move.

I like the store’s variety of alcohol and would have spent more time shopping, however the lady standing in my peripheral watching me made me feel like I needed to make my NYE purchases and go. She didn’t speak to me, she didn’t return my smile, she just stared. When I picked up something to read the box and re tuned it to its space, she walked up to straighten it an returned to her area of staring! I say all of this to request that you address your customer service skills, as such great reviews suggest that you treat people much better than that.

This is the classiest, cleanest, best stocked Chinese liquor store in the city. It’s set up like a duty-​free liquor store in a major airport international terminal, only with the taxes and a little less aisle space. If you’re already going to eat in Chinatown, stop by here if you’re going to a BYOB place (and so many of the restaurants are BYOB). This is also a good place to come if you’re looking for a nice present for people who like Chinese liquor, people from China, or drinkers who like to try something different. A few other reviewers have incorrectly described the place as having a wide selection of «Asian liquor» but I didn’t find that to be the case, they have an excellent selection of Chinese alcohol, a smaller but good selection of other Far East Asian drinks like Japanese sake, plum wine, and Korean soju, and a limited but generally higher class selection of whiskey and other liquors from other places. I don’t think it’s worth going out of your way for liquors other than the Chinese selection, as parking is always challenging in Chinatown. It is worth a visit if you’re celebrating anything with Chinese people and/​or Chinese food, because drinks are very basic requirements for Chinese celebrations, and billions of people have found that Chinese liquor goes well with Chinese food. For dinner, there’s lots of affordable baiju choices, I’ve found through a little experimentation that none of the very cheapest choices are palatable, so as a rule of thumb, start one or two rungs above the basement priced brands.
Sometimes baiju and huangiu, the two most common of the Chinese liquors, are translated as «rice wine,» which I find misleading as they really don’t taste like grape wine, they’re stronger than most wines, though they are made from rice (usually). I think there are regional differences in the grain, Southern Chinese baiju are made from rice, but Northern Chinese baiju may be made from sorghum, barley, or wheat. The Chinese were the first civilization to develop modern agricultural techniques for all these grains. I don’t believe the grain makes the bigger difference in the taste variation for baiju, I think it’s like vodka, the choice of water makes the difference, but I could be wrong on that, it may be caused by the different choices of yeast starters and I don’t want to know about that.
I do know that baiju varies quite a bit in taste, and the fragrance patterns are:
1) Sauce bouquet (jiàng xing) — Has a strong ammonia smell and is commonly served with appetizers and pickled food. Maotai () is typical of this category.
2) Heavy bouquet (nóng xing) — Sweet and mellow. I think this is the kind that the chefs use, just a couple of drops, on fish or fish and vegetable dishes, just at the end of cooking, the improve the fishy smell. Or, it could be that this is the choice of alcoholic cooks who cover up their drinking on the job, as a couple of Chinese cooks have told me that baiju is never used in cooking.
3) Light bouquet (qng xing) — A bit drier with less aroma.
4) Rice bouquet (m xing) — A subtle rice aroma.
5) Honey bouquet (fng xing) — Lightly sweet and aromatic. I know this is the kind I don’t like.
6) Layered fragrance — A combination of «sauce,» «heavy,» and «light» fragrances.
The translation is crude, it’s an example of the Sapir-​Whorf thesis, some things just don’t translate, but once you try the 6 different taste types, you’ll know these differences and maybe you can correct or improve the English adjectives. At any rate, this is the only liquor store in the metropolitan area that allows this wide a selection. On the higher end are some absolutely beautiful bottles, so artistic and unusual, they would make memorable gifts, even if the recipients don’t usually drink baiju, you can tell them it may be healthy for them (dubious Chinese medical research suggests that drinking yaojiu improved the blood circulation of elderly rats).
I find baiju to be very deceptive in terms of how quickly one can become impaired. Especially when you’re eating dinner in Chinatown, I would recommend designating a driver who doesn’t get any, or using public transportation.
Gam Bei! (I think that’s Han for Kanpai)

Their Asian liquor selection will rock your world. All the representative sorts of Chinese liquor are here. They carry some interesting Japanese and Korean brands as well. A good starting point is something relatively mild, such as sake or plum wine. Stronger kinds like Chinese spirits are acquired tastes and certainly not for everybody.
There are a bunch of BYOB restaurants in Chinatown, so it would be a good idea to check out this place before your meal.

Came here once looking for a plum wine. The lady was nice and we walked around a bit and everything is nicely shelved and clean.
Prices are fair… even though I found my plum wine a few dollars cheaper at Super H, but this location is more convenient.

Decent selection of wines and a nice array of sake and soju, but beware– no one here speaks a word of English.

This will be a short review because it was a real quick stop.
I’m a little conflicted about 3 or 4 stars but I’m going to err on the side of praise. Not everyone here speaks English so if you call the store and ask any question like «What time do you close?» then be ready for them to ‘smile’ over the phone and then hang up on you because they don’t know what you’re saying.
The selection here is pretty good though. I walked in, they saw I wasn’t Asian, recommended a ’98 Merlot. I then specifically asked for Lychee wine from reading another review which ended up tasting very good.
The prices seem a bit much but not over the top. Service is polite and courteous, establishment is clean and organized. I’d come back again but it would definitely be advisable to have enough time to look around or know what you want ahead of time.

Some things I’ve learned from my first visit to this very clean, very pretty, decently stocked store…
1. If you want any other kind of Chinese beer than Tsingtao and you don’t live in L.A., you’re FUCKED! The closest distributor is in Canada. This sucks, as I had been hoping to find Lanjian (Blue Sword, some good good beer from Chengdu, Sichuan Province) here (Tsingtao is not very good beer at all, but it’s pretty good with Sichuanese food all the same; I wish they sold some of the great Taiwan beer I’ve heard about and the killer beer I had in Japan – maybe someday).
2. There are more types of baijiu and soju here than I’d ever thought existed.
3. Most of them are out of my price range (or at least were today.
4. Many beautiful, giggly Chinese-​American girls pop in here looking for sake and other good stuff, so the eye-​candy points are pretty huge.
5. Shao-​hsing wine from Taiwan is pretty tasty and affordable.
6. They don’t carry (or at least don’t yet carry) the sake from my fiancé’s home prefecture (this is a negative, not a positive – the stuff’s the best I’ve ever had).
7. I really, really hope they carry it soon.
I’ll be back.

We were going to Spring World for dinner and it’s BYO. Spring World and China Place Liquor City are right next to each other, so couldn’t be more convenient. Great selection of sake. We got a 12 pack of Tsing Tao and a 3-​pack of sakes.

Went to Chinatown for dinner one night and stumbled into this place walking around afterward. It was a pretty inviting place. Classy and clean.
Spent a few minutes looking at the sake, and one of the salesmen the store walked up to us to see if we needed anything. We asked for some advice and he gave us some pretty good advice. He was a nice guy and had a lot of interesting things to say.
I will definitely be going back here. They’ve got some stuff I’ve never tried before and it was all at a pretty reasonable price.

After reading the article on China Place Liquor City in the Reader a few weeks ago (
) I decided I had to check this place out.
I hang out with a lot of, let’s say, functioning alcoholics. Ones that love nothing more than trying new sauce. With Christmas coming up, it seems that the stars aligned.
I walked into Liquor City and was immediately greeted by Mr. Jia. He smiled, eagerly waiting to be asked a question. I knew right off the bat that I needed some lychee wine for myself, and when I nabbed it he chuckled, noting that a lot of American customers like it.
When I mentioned I’d read the article he grinned modestly, and then helped me select a baijiu for a friend. He talked a little about a few, nothing overpowering or super salesy. I let him know what I was looking to spend, and there was zero pressure.
The prices we more than reasonable (seriously, ten bucks for the bottle of lychee wine, which made last night a marvelous one) and I can’t wait to go back and try more.
Though they don’t have a mailing list, he did mention they were looking at hosting some in-​store events on Chinese drinking and business customs, as well as tastings. When I expressed interest, he promptly gave me a business card and his email address.
Seriously, amazing service and great product. What more could you ask for in a store. I hope this place is around for a long time.

A friend and I were walking around Chinatown Square after dinner a few nights ago and came across this place. I had never seen it before, so we decided to walk in (sure enough, after asking, we found out they had only been opened for about a month).
The first thing that struck me as I entered the store is how elegant and clean it is for a liquor store in that area. Very, very nice. After a few minutes of just walking around, looking and chatting, the floor salesman came over to talk to us. Before walking into the shop, I hadn’t planned on buying anything, but after he talked with us a bit we ended up buying a cheap bottle of sake. I can’t stress enough how polite the salesman was and there was no pressure to buy. He was wearing a suit jacket and a tie with the knot down low. He gave off a professional yet very casual vibe. One of the few salesman I walked away from thinking «I wouldn’t mind talking to him a bit more…»
I’m sure I’ll be back again sometime. They had a lot of interesting liquor in there that I didn’t get a chance to check out yet.