Mao Wang? Old Deng wine?

For value investors, identifying a company's moat is key. Kweichow Moutai's moat is not simply brand recognition, but a nearly irreplicable scarcity barrier jointly constructed by physical scarcity, hierarchical privilege, and storage dynamics. This system is the deep investment logic that supports its ability to weather cycles and stand firm.

First, the rigid production limit is the physical cornerstone of its value. Moutai's annual output is constrained by its unique brewing environment and craftsmanship, remaining stable at tens of millions of bottles. Placing this number in the vast market of 1.4 billion people, its scarcity becomes immediately apparent. This is not marketing rhetoric but a physical reality. It fundamentally prevents Moutai from becoming a mass consumer product, ensuring its products remain in a seller's market with perpetual undersupply. This structural gap is the root of its strong pricing power. The company can raise prices almost unimpeded, with each increase directly reinforcing its revenue and profit floor.

Second, the hierarchical consumption barrier is a perpetual demand engine. Moutai's core consumption scenarios are concentrated in high-end government affairs, business, and elite social circles. Here, it has long transcended the category of a beverage, evolving into a social hard currency and status entry ticket.

The fact that most people aren't even qualified to attend a Moutai-included gathering is the rigidity of its demand. This demand doesn't rely on individual preferences but is sustained by stable social structures and power dynamics. As long as this social structure exists, demand for Moutai won't disappear. It forms a closed loop of privileged consumption, ensuring the core 10 million consumers will continuously absorb the vast majority of output, preventing any demand gap in the market.

Finally, overestimations of private stockpiles and real storage costs jointly lock the elasticity of circulating supply. There's a common market illusion that private collectors hold massive reserves of aged Moutai that could flood the market at any time. However, the reality is that storing large quantities of Moutai requires professional space and conditions, making it prohibitively expensive for ordinary households. Thus, actual private reserves are far lower than imagined and highly fragmented. This leads to a critical outcome:

The effective circulating supply is extremely limited. After meeting the rigid demand of core consumer groups, the tens of millions of new bottles added annually leave almost negligible surplus for free market circulation. Any marginal new demand (e.g., emerging affluent groups trying to enter core circles) would trigger massive price fluctuations in this narrow circulating pool, further reinforcing its financial attributes as an inflation hedge and value preserver, attracting more attention and creating a virtuous cycle.

Conclusion:

Investing in Moutai is essentially investing in a uniquely privileged social scarcity. Its business model is nearly perfect: using extreme supply to meet an extremely rigid demand backed by top-tier social structures, while its product inherently possesses anti-inflation financial value. As long as its scarcity moat remains unbreached—and this is nearly impossible to replicate—

Moutai will continue as a stable and powerful value-creation machine, delivering sustained returns to its holders in the long investment race.

To put it bluntly, the core thesis is just one: Moutai's essence is the stability of the privileged class in China. Based on recent personal observations and social events, from applicable scenarios or baseline cognition, it remains investable for the next decade or so.