makes tequila; Brazilian sugarcane makes cachaça; the discarded leftovers from Chilean and Peruvian wine making makes pisco; and anything can make vodka.
7.When you take a drink of alcohol, it passes through the walls of your stomach and small intestine into the bloodstream. Your blood then takes the alcohol to your brain, and then the liver filters out the alcohol from your blood.
8.The discovery of distillation provided convenience, portability, and preservation. No longer did one need to worry about spoilage (like with beer and wine), and traveling with a bottle of brandy—or port, sherry, and Madeira—was much easier than lugging a barrel of it.
9.Most spirits range around 80 proof (40 percent). The highest legal limit for spirit proof is 190 (95 percent), but who would want to drink that is up for debate.
10.The most popular alcoholic cocktails in the world today include Martini, Margarita, Mojito, Manhattan, Old-Fashioned, Daiquiri, Bloody Mary, Mint Julep, Piña Colada, Cosmopolitan, Whiskey Sour, Sazerac, Tom Collins, Caipirinha, and Negroni.
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Distilled Alcohol Timeline
776 − At age thirty-nine, Persian alchemist and chemist Al-Jabir (Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan) invents the al-ambiq still as part of his laboratory equipment.
830 − Muslim Arab philosopher, physician, and polymath Al-Kindi (801–873) distills a digestible elixir from an alembic still.
900 − Persian polymath, philosopher, and physician Al-Razi (854–925) discovers many compounds and chemicals in his medicinal experimentations—and one of them is alcohol.
1000 − The Moors (the name given to a large population of Arabs, Berber North Africans, and Muslim Europeans) introduce alembic distillation methods in France and Spain.
1144 − Englishman and Arabic translator Robert of Chester translates the written works of distillation from Al-Jabir, Al-Kindi, and Al-Razi from Arab to Latin.
1192 − Genoese merchants bring an India spirit called arrack to Russia.
1250 − German friar and Catholic bishop Albertus Magnus (also known as Saint Albert the Great) documents his experiments in making aqua vitae.
1253 − King Louis IX of France sends William de Rubruquis to convert the Tartars to Christianity. During his journey, he becomes the first European traveler to mention koumis (distilled female horse milk) and arrack.
1269 − German poet Jacob van Maerlant publishes twenty books in his lifetime and Der Naturen Bloeme mentions juniper-based tonics and medicines.
1280 − English philosopher and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon translates Al-Razi’s distillation process into Latin.
1292 − While traveling home from Beijing to Italy, Venetian merchant Marco Polo discovers a spirit indigenous to Samara in Indonesia called “arrack,” which is made with sugar palm juice. He records the spirit in the second volume of The Travels of Marco Polo (II Milione in Italian).
1297 − Philosopher and writer Ramon Llull explains the secrets of distillation to Britain’s King Edward II.
1310 − Physician Arnaud de Ville-Neuve distills wine with an alembic still and coins the term “aqua vitae.”
1320 − In 2008, The Red Book of Ossory (published in 1320) becomes the first book to be digitalized at the RCB Library in Dublin, Ireland—aqua vitae is documented in the book.
1404 − A grain-based aqua vitae that is produced throughout Poland is mentioned in Poland’s Sandomierz Court Registry.
1411 − Armagnac goes into full-scale production in France.
1414 − Armagnac is registered as a commercial product in Saint-Sever, France.
1426 − Geneose merchants pass through Russia and give the Grand Prince of Moscow a bottle of their arrack. It’s believed that within a few years, monasteries are ordered to produce a grain-based version called bread wine.
1455 − Austrian-born and Viennese-trained physician Michael Puff von Schrick writes A Very Useful Book on Distillations, which describes eighty-two herbal liquors. In 1466, it is printed and published. Even though Schrick dies in 1473, the book goes through thirty-eight editions from 1476–1601.
1478 − Arnaud de Ville-Neuve’s Liber de Vinis (“Book of Wines”) is translated into English, printed, and published. The book is filled with recipes on how to make therapeutic wine using herbs, spices, metal compounds, syrups, and flavored spirits.
1493 − A German physician in Nuremburg writes about kirshwasser, a cherry eau-de-vie made from Black Forest morello cherries: “In view of the fact that everyone at present has got into the habit of drinking aqua vitae it is necessary to remember the quantity that one can permit oneself to drink and learn to drink it according to one’s capacities, if one wishes to behave like a gentleman.”
1495 − The first recorded mention of Scotch whisky is from a June 1 entry in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland (accounting records). The entry says, “To Friar John Cor, by order of the King James IV, to make aqua vitae VIII bolls of malt.” Four years later, the Lord High Treasurer’s account recorded payment: “To the barbour that brought aqua vitae to the King in Dundee.”
1500 − German surgeon and alchemist Hieronymous Brunschwig publishes Liber de arte distillandi: Das buch der rechten kunst zu distillieren (“The Book of the Art of Distillation”) in Strasbourg. It is a groundbreaking book that inspires numerous Holland distilling houses to begin producing brandewijn (burnt wine) from malted grain.
1501 − Others had tried, including Christopher Columbus, but Pedro de Atienza is the first to successfully import sugarcane seedlings to Hispaniola. He harvests his first crop four years later.
1505 − Scotland’s King James IV grants a monopoly to the Guild of Surgeons and Barbers to produce aqua vitae.
1514 − One year before he dies, King Louis XII of France licenses vinegar producers to distill eau-de-vie.
1531 − In Santiago de Tequila, Mexico, Spanish settlers construct alquitaras (stills) and distill pulque—a local fermented beverage made from the agave plant. They call the result mexcalli (mezcal).
1533 − Martim Afonso de Sousa and four partners set up three confectioneries and they make a sugarcane wine into aguardiente de caña (sugarcane eau-de-vie)—which is later known as cachaça.
−Fourteen-year-old Italian Caterina de’ Medici marries fourteen-year-old Henry, the second son of King Francis I of France. She brings bottles of Tuscany Liquore Mediceo, Fraticello, and Elixir Stomatico di Lunga Vita, which are made by monks in the mountains surrounding Florence.
1534 − Polish pharmacist Stefan Falimirz publishes the lavishly illustrated book of medical treatments O Ziolach / O Mocy Ich (“On Herbs and Their Potency”), which is one of the first to document the word “vodka” and details the preparation of over seventy vodka-based medicines.
1537 − King Francis I of France grants wholesale grocers a license to produce eau-de-vie.
1538 − Spanish settlers in Peru begin to harvest and export wine, and the non-suitable harvests are given away to farmers who make what we know of today as pisco.
1552
