Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Co (TTL, 台灣菸酒公司) said yesterday that it plans to sell up to 180 million bottles of rice wine by the end of this year, up from 6 million bottles last year, after the price of the cooking wine was halved last month.
On Sept. 16, TTL began selling the new Red Label rice wine as “cooking wine” at NT$27, including a NT$2 bottle deposit, roughly half the NT$50 it cost when it was sold as a “distilled spirit.”
“A total of 14 million bottles of rice wine have been produced since it went on the market for half its original price. So far, about 10 million bottles have been sold,” TTL chairman Duan Wei (韋伯韜) said during a question-and-answer session at the legislature.
Wei was responding to a question from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕), who wondered if new rice wine might have been watered down after the price was cut and thus pushed sales up.
“I promise you the quality of rice wine remains as good as before,” Wei said.
Wei also said the words “excellent liquor” were removed from the label after it was classified as a cooking ingredient.
“This is to help prevent consumers from confusing it for a liquor,” he said.
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