Three years ago, only a few rice wine brands were available on the online shopping platform Taobao, most of the vendors selling the homemade variety. Now a search for mijiu there brings up dozens of pages of results, most of them brands produced by large concerns.

One of the best-selling ones on Taobao is Huatianxiangzi, the value of whose sales on the platform was 5 million yuan ($772,000) last year, the brand's creator, Fan Yu, says.

Fan, of Xi'an, Shaanxi province, says his aim is to introduce Chinese rice wine to the world.