This is the "magic of winemaking" in the new era – using digital innovation to connect tradition and the future; using cultural innovation to connect wine and life. On January 31st, National Taiwan once again joined hands with CCTV to innovatively launch "Xiao Satan Factory: Intelligent Manufacturing of "Magic"", which quickly became a hit as soon as it was aired. In just a few days, the number of views across the entire network quickly exceeded 100 million times. This audio-visual feast, guided by the magic "exploration" of Maotai Town, with "technology" as its core and "culture" as its soul, not only refreshed the public's cognitive boundaries of the liquor industry, but also transformed the grand proposition of how the "historical classic industry" can move towards modernization into an immersive intellectual journey.
This time, Sa Beining is no longer just a CCTV host familiar to the audience, but has transformed into a "scientific detective", going deep into the core hinterland of Chinese Maotai-flavor liquor – Moutai Town, Kweichow, and entering the Guotai Distillery, trying to solve a question: Why is it that only Maotai Town can brew truly top-level Maotai Liquor? What kind of "magic" is hidden behind high-quality Guotai wine?
CCTV × National Taiwan Network join hands again to tell the modern story of liquor
This is not the first time Sa Beining has walked into Maotai Town. As early as 2024, he visited the Guotai Distillery in Maotai Town as an observer. This "second exploration" is of great significance – it marks that Guotai Liquor and CCTV have once again joined hands to create a phenomenal brand content communication event. Different from the one-way output of traditional advertisements or promotional videos, this cooperation is centered on "characters + narrative + technology experience" and innovatively adopts the content form of documentary + immersive visit + metaverse interaction to transform serious industrial transformation issues into cultural expressions that the public loves to hear.
What's more, the spread was perfectly timed. On October 16, 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Historical Classic Industries (2026-2030) (Draft for Comment)", which clearly defined the brewing industry as a "historical classic industry" for the first time. This policy positioning not only gives the liquor industry a new historical mission, but also injects a shot in the arm into the liquor industry which is in a period of deep adjustment.
In this context, Guotai Liquor chose to join forces with CCTV to use Sa Beining, a national public figure, to lead hundreds of millions of viewers to re-understand liquor – it is not only a cultural heritage for thousands of years, but also the forefront of technological innovation.
Three key words: distillation, microorganisms, data
In the footage of "Xiao Sa Tan Factory: Intelligent Creation of "Magic"", Sa Beining transforms into a "secret seeker", holding three key words – distillation, microorganisms, and data, and reveals the mystery of Maotai Town sauce wine brewing one by one.
Keyword 1: Distillation – a leap from “one thousand cups without getting drunk” to stable quality. At the beginning of the program, Sa Beining met the "Poetic Immortal" Li Bai by chance at Guotai Winery, triggering a dialogue between ancient and modern times. Li Bai joked that he had "a hundred poems about wine fighting", but in fact, most of the wine he drank at that time was undistilled fermented wine, and the alcohol content was generally very low, far less than that of today's liquor. Even if the distillation technology is mature, because it relies heavily on the personal experience of the master, the process operations vary from person to person, and the quality of the wine is difficult to stabilize.
How to make every bottle of wine reach the same high quality? The answer lies in National Taiwan’s smart brewing system. Here, the traditional sauce wine brewing craft formulas such as "See the steam and press the fermented grains" and "Easy and thin" have been transformed into sophisticated data control. The steam distribution is monitored in real time through an infrared probe, and the mechanical arm accurately reproduces the steamer loading action to ensure that the heating uniformity of each steamer is maximized. This transformation from "experience-driven" to "data-driven" is the scientific sublimation of traditional craftsmanship in modern brewing.
Keyword 2: Microorganisms – the invisible "wine-making magicians". If distillation determines the concentration of wine, then microorganisms are the soul that determines the aroma of wine.
Wearing VR glasses, Sa Beining and Li Bai entered the world of the "National Taipei Metaverse" together, and a spectacular picture of life appeared in front of them: thousands of microorganisms were active and running in Maotai Town, each performing their own duties – yeast produces aroma, bacteria regulates sourness, and mold promotes transformation. In the brewing process of Guotai liquor alone, more than 1,000 microorganisms are involved and more than 3,000 substances are produced.
What China Taiwan does is to be the "super nanny" and "chef" of these "magicians" – allowing the microorganisms to eat well, grow well, and work efficiently.
Keyword 3: Data – making the "craftsman spirit" replicable and inheritable. If the first two keywords reveal the "natural code" of sauce wine, then the third keyword "data" points to the future direction – intelligence, standardization and replicability.
In the Guotai Intelligent Brewing Workshop, Sa Beining witnessed a shocking scene: the robotic arm moved dexterously above the retort, and the infrared probe scanned the steam distribution like an "eye"; on the control system screen, various parameters jumped in real time, forming smooth data curves.
It turns out that National Taiwan has broken down the process of the "12987" sauce wine brewing cycle (i.e. one-year production cycle, two grain feedings, nine cooking times, eight fermentations, and seven wine extractions) into 30 processes, 274 links, and 1,508 process indicators, and the operating standards of each process have been digitized and modeled. For example, in the grain-moistening process, a mathematical model of the gelatinization degree of sorghum was established through image recognition and infrared detection technology, which can accurately determine whether "seven-minute cooked" or "eight-minute cooked" is achieved, thereby achieving the best cooking effect.
"The 'magic' of intelligent manufacturing in Taiwan is to transform the experience and mentality of traditional manual craftsmen into precise digital expressions to build a digitally intelligent production system," Sa Beining concluded.
And this is a true reflection of the concept put forward by National Taiwan University of "adhering to tradition without clinging to the past, and scientific innovation without departing from the original" – respecting tradition, but not stopping at tradition; embracing technology, but never deviating from the essence.
The whole chain transition of Guotai Intelligent Brewing
In fact, behind this "intelligent magic" lies more than 20 years of continuous investment and technological research by Taiwan.
Since 1999, for more than ten years, Guotai has focused on systematically learning the authentic Maotai wine brewing techniques and accumulated massive amounts of original data. In the next ten years, it has fully promoted "modernization" – converting experience into numbers and building a digital and intelligent production system covering the entire production process.
In October 2023, National Taiwan officially released the "National Taiwan Intelligent Brewing Standard System", becoming China's first intelligent brewing standard system for Maotai-flavor liquor. One year later, the system was upgraded to version 2.0, further improving the process indicators and becoming a benchmark for the industry to follow.
Up to now, National Taiwan has joined forces with top institutions such as the China Liquor Industry Association, Jiangnan University, and Tianjin University of Science and Technology to establish a large scientific research platform. It has achieved 5 internationally leading scientific research results, applied for 242 patents, published 143 academic papers, and built a complete innovation chain of "basic research – technological research – achievement transformation".
At the hardware level, China and Taiwan collaborated with equipment manufacturing companies to develop 735 sets of intelligent brewing equipment with primary and auxiliary supporting functions and full linkage, overcoming the shortage of complete sets of equipment for sauce wine production. Whether it is smart koji making, smart steamer loading, smart cooling, or smart wine delivery, all operations have been automated, closed, and clean.
Traditional Maotai-flavor wine needs to be collected in seven rounds. The flavor of the base wine in each round is very different. Finally, it is blended with the "art of the tongue" by the old craftsman to form a unique style. However, this method is highly dependent on personal experience and is easily affected by physical conditions, emotions and other factors, making it difficult to ensure batch consistency.
Guotai used science and technology to establish a database of ingredients for the flavor of each round of base wine, find the characteristic data of each flavor, establish a fingerprint map, and accurately calculate the blending ratio of each round of base wine. The wine blended in this way is more stable in batches and of better quality.
At the same time, Guotai also researches wine body optimization technology and successfully applies it in many products to make the wine body softer, cleaner and healthier. The specific performance is: the content of fusel oil is lower, and the body feels more comfortable after drinking; the content of aldehydes is lower, the taste is smoother, and the throat is not spicy; the quality standards of national and Taiwanese products have also been improved. On the basis of national standards, 12 new corporate internal control standards have been added, and the control of 8 unhelpful ingredient indicators has been stricter.
The deep logic behind playing more than 100 million yuan
As of the beginning of 2026, the views of "Xiao Sa Returns to Maotai Town" have exceeded 100 million, and related short video secondary creations are emerging one after another. The success of this communication is no accident. The reason why it touches people's hearts is that it tells a story that resonates with the times: In a seemingly conservative traditional industry, a technological revolution that is still flowing deep is quietly taking place.
Taiwan did not deny tradition, but used technology to accurately inherit tradition; it did not abandon handwork, but let machines inherit ingenuity; it did not cater to short-term traffic, but insisted on long-term R&D investment. It is this attitude of "holding millennium culture in its left hand and modern technology in its right hand" that allowed it to buck the trend during the period of deep adjustment in the industry and become the representative force of "China's new famous wines".
The more far-reaching significance is that this "intelligent manufacturing" practice provides a sample for the digital and intelligent transformation and upgrading of historical classic industries. When the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology lists brewing as a "historical classic industry", it means that its cultural value and development potential are highly recognized at the policy level. National Taiwan’s exploration proves that only by embracing the digital intelligence era and through scientific research empowerment, standard guidance, and intelligent upgrading can classic industries be rejuvenated.
As Sa Beining said at the end of the film: "Today, the iteration of brewing technology has far exceeded the imagination of previous generations. What we see is not only the innovation of Taiwan, but also the vigorous vitality of the historical classic industry of Chinese liquor because of the empowerment of science and technology."
With history, heritage, ingenuity and technology, from "Steampunk Town" to "Smart Brewing Factory", from Xiao Sa's exploration to the attention of hundreds of millions of people, Guotai Liquor is interpreting the answer to the times of Chinese liquor in a brand new way.
Standing at the new starting point of the "15th Five-Year Plan", National Taiwan will continue to focus on the three major events of "making good wine", "making good wine", and "drinking good wine". With consumers as the center, digital intelligence as the engine, product strength as the foundation, and brand culture as the soul, we will seize opportunities in the turbulent industry changes, break through cycles with innovation, and win the future with digital intelligence empowerment. (Source: Guizhou Daily Press)
