The History of Stone Guardian’s Vintage Pain Liniment

Stone Guardian’s Vintage Pain Liniment really tells a story of the birth of Stone Guardian here in Salem, Oregon. When Spider and Kort settled here in Salem we wanted to bring not just our own flavor of Acupuncture here but also something to make us a little unique. Spider had been using Dit Da Jow in his martial arts practice for decades and after using some in China he wanted to try his hand at making it here, in the same way. 

Dit Da Jow was created to mend injuries suffered while training in Chinese Martial Arts, specifically Wing Chun, Iron Fist Training. Over the generations many Dit Da Jows have been created using countless herbal recipes by different Martial Arts schools and Acupuncturists for the same principle, healing injury. Well, as it turned out Dit Da Jow recipes varied so much that Spider went to Kort with a list of over a hundred different potential ingredients.

Kort, being the Herbalist of the two, took that list and narrowed it down to a unique blend of eleven different Chinese herbs that he felt was the best grouping. Meanwhile Spider worked on sourcing the alcohol that seemed to be crucial in making Dit Da Jow in the same fashion as he had experienced in China, Baijiu. Importing Baijiu was staggeringly expensive so he turned his search closer to home. As it turned out, the only distiller in the United States to make Baijiu was right here in Oregon, just a short trip north from Salem.

Historically, Baijiu would have been used as the liquid component because it nourishes the herbs during the aging process. We sourced our Baijiu from Vinn, a local distillery here in Wilsonville, Oregon. We combined the herbs Kort selected with Vinn’s Baijiu and did our best to ignore it as long as we could. Once aged we strained the liquid off and combined it with aromatic herbs before bottling. We found the longer we aged the liniment the more potent it became. We are currently bottling once a year, with each batch having at least three years of aging at this point. 

Vinn Distillery choosing to partner with Spider and Kort is really what made our Vintage Pain Liniment a reality. It was thus heart breaking when we learned in 2024 that the company had sold and sourcing it through the new owners seemed impossible. Until that point we had sold our Vintage Pain Liniment right here on our website, shipping it all over the country. After a year of not being able to contact the new owners we gave up and pulled it from our website. We still provide it to our clients here in the clinic and sell it to those that stop in. Maybe one day we’ll start distilling Baijiu ourselves and be able to offer it online again. Finger’s crossed!

Before selling it online though, in the summer of 2016, we took our Vintage Pain Liniment to the Salem Saturday Market. This was at first just a way to get the word out about our new brick and mortar clinic. Some of the folks that found us there became some of the very first clients here at 910 Capitol Street. The liniment became quite popular among the vendors as well, due to its warming quality on cold mornings.

Now that we have moved into a larger space we have more and more batches going, with each batch that gets bottled just a bit older than the last. Maybe one day we won't even think about bottling a batch younger than a decade. Our Vintage Pain Liniment is also now a cornerstone to many of the Pain Clinics, due to its ability to help the muscles calm down after Orthopedic Acupuncture. It also pairs excellently with a hydrocollator pack.