Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Spirits and Liqueurs

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Thousands of years ago, the first humans accidentally created the first beer and wine. This occurred naturally when yeast in the air converted sugars into alcohol.  However, it wasn’t until thousands of years later that new techniques were developed to process those beverages, but even then, the products they created weren’t designed for consumption.  Eventually, these techniques were perfected to a point where they could be consumed, and they resulted in entirely new categories of beverages.  Learn more about Spirits and Liqueurs, what the difference is, and the various types on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thousands of years ago, the first humans accidentally created the first beer and wine. This occurred naturally when yeast in the air converted sugars into alcohol. However, it wasn't until thousands of years later that new techniques were developed to distill those beverages, but even then the products they created weren't designed for human consumption. Eventually, these techniques were perfected to a point where they could be consumed, and they resulted in entirely new categories of beverages. Learn more about spirits and liqueurs, what the difference is, and the various types, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. We might as well start off the episode by defining some terms. and I should note at the beginning that there doesn't seem to be universal agreement on the exact meaning of some of these terms.

I'm going to provide those that seem to be the most commonly used and which also happen to be the ones that make the most sense. If we were to categorize everything and create a tree diagram, at the very top of what we're going to be talking about in this episode would be liquor. Liquor covers both spirits and liqueurs. Despite similar spellings and pronunciation, liquor and liqueurs are different things. and I will get into the difference later in the episode. The confusion and the definition comes from the fact that many people use the term liquor and spirits interchangeably.

They treat them like synonyms. For the purpose of this episode, I will use liquor as the overarching category that covers all distilled beverages with high alcohol content, and by high, I mean that above most wines and beers. Colloquially, liquor would be synonymous with hooch or booze. Under that category of liquor, then, we first have spirit. spirits. Spirits start out as a fermented beverage where yeast turns sugars into alcohol, just like with beer and wine. However, what makes them a spirit is that a spirit undergoes

distillation. Everything I'm going to be talking about in this episode has to do with distillation, so I might as well spend some time talking about that before going any further. Distillation comes from the fact that alcohol and water had different boiling points. The boiling point of ethanol, aka grain alcohol, is 173.1 degrees Fahrenheit or 78.4 degrees Celsius. Methanol or wood alcohol has a boiling point of 66 degrees Celsius or 151 degrees Fahrenheit. As you probably know, the boiling point of water is 212 degrees Fahrenheit and 100 degrees Celsius. So if you can heat a mixture of alcohol and water to the boiling point of alcohol but below the boiling point of water, the alcohol will become a vapor and separate.

from the water. Mostly. Once the alcohol vapor leaves, it has to be cooled back down to form a liquid once again. Distilling is done in a still, and most stills will have coils of tubing where the cooling and condensation of the alcohol vapor will take place. Disilling isn't just used for the separation of water and alcohol. It's used for separating water from salt, as well as separating different petroleum products from crude oil. Distilling actually has ancient origins. The earliest evidence of distillation comes from ancient Babylonian tablets that date back to around 1,200 BC. However, this was not necessarily done for the purpose of creating an alcoholic beverage.

It is thought that they were distilling alcohol from wine for use and perfumes. There was primitive distillation taking place in India using terracotta tubes in the first several centuries, and there's evidence of distillation taking place in China during the Han dynasty during the first and second centuries. Likewise, the scholars in Alexandria were doing simple distilling in the first and first century as well. For the most part, these early efforts in distillation had nothing to do with creating alcohol for consumption. In addition to the Babylonian use of alcohol for perfumes, other cultures mostly used it for medicines and alchemy experiments because the resulting product was

highly flammable. Surprisingly, perhaps the greatest advances in distillation technology and techniques came during the Islamic Golden Age, and I say surprisingly simply because of the Muslim prohibition against the consumption of alcohol. The 9th century chemist Javier Ibn Hayan experimented with the distillation of wine, and Abu Bakar al-Razi also experimented with the distillation of different substances. In the late 13th century, the Italian chemist Tadeo Eldradi reported that he was able to get a liquid that was 90% alcohol through repeated distilling. Distilling for the purpose of creating alcohol for consumption didn't begin until about a thousand years ago. There's documentation of distilling to create alcohol in the Song and Jin dynasties in China,

and archaeological evidence for distilling in China dates back to about the year 1,200. Distillation of alcohol was introduced to India sometime in the 14th century, probably from the Middle East. In 1437, there were reports of a substance called burned water in Germany, which was most likely in early form of brandy. It really wasn't until the 16th century that you can say spirits that we might recognize today came into existence and were consumed for their own sake. The history of each individual spirit could be the subject of its own episode, so I'm just going to leave it here. But what I want you to come away with is that distilled spirits, as we know them, are relatively recent innovations, historically speaking. There are six major categories of spirits. And this is not an exhaustive list because there are some that fall outside of these six, such as absinthe,

but for all practical purposes, these six make up the vast majority of spirits manufactured and sold in the world. The six are brandy, whiskey, rum, gin, tequila, and vodka. So let's go through them in order. Brandy is the oldest of the spirits. Brandy is defined as the distillation of any fermented alcohol that comes from fruit, but traditional brandy is derived from distilled wine. However, there are brandies derived from other fruits, including peaches, apples, apricots, and cherries.

Under the category of brandy are several different types of spirits. Cognac is a type of brandy that hails from the Cognac region of France. As with champagne, anything labeled Cognac can only come from Cognac in southwest France. Arminioc is a similar brandy product, which comes from the Armagnac area of Gascany in France. Both products receive their dark color from aging in oak barrels, which I'll talk about more in a bit. Other types of brandy include Grappa, which is made out of Pommas, which is the solid leftovers from wine production.

Not surprisingly, you'll find most brandies, produced in winemaking regions. California, South Africa, and Australia also have some fine brandies that come from their wine producing areas. The next spirit is whiskey. Whiskey is defined as any distilled alcohol that comes from a fermented grain mash. The most popular grains are barley, corn, rye, and wheat. Whiskey has the same basic ingredients as beer. What many people don't realize is that if you distill beer, you wind up with a form of whiskey. Most whiskey distillers do not use beer as their base, but there have been some brewers that have started distilling their beers to create unique whiskeys. There are multiple different types of whiskey that are produced

around the world. Most of them are heavily regulated in terms of how a whiskey can be sold and marketed. Scotch whiskey, also known simply as Scotch, is produced in Scotland, and most Scotch whiskeys are distilled twice. Irish whiskeys are from Ireland and tend to be distilled three times. Bourbon is a whiskey that can only be produced in the United States. although the majority of the bourbon is produced in the states of Kentucky and Tennessee. Bourbon legally has to consist of at least 51% corn and has to be aged in charred white oak barrels. There are many other types of whiskey depending on the ingredients used, including malt whiskey, rye whiskey, corn whiskey, and blended whiskeys. One hallmark of all whiskeys is at their barrel aged.

The liquid that goes into a barrel is usually clear, and what comes out has a caramel color which comes from the barrel aging. The entire subject of barrel aging and the barrel-making process is actually really fascinating and might be worth an episode of its own in the future. Because the ingredients are rather universal, whiskeys are produced all over the world. One of the more recent countries to begin distilling whiskey is Japan, which has quickly developed a reputation for some of the world's finest whiskeys. The next major spirit is rum. Rum is defined as any distilled spirit which is created from the fermentation of sugar. The sugar is usually in the form of molasses or sugar cane juice. Rum has traditionally been associated with the Caribbean, where there was lots of sugar cane production.

However, rum can be produced anywhere. Rum was produced in many American cities in the 18th and early 19th centuries due to the importation of molasses from the Caribbean. Rum may be clear or dark in color depending on how they are made. Dark rums are often aged in barrels and light rums may be filtered to remove any color in the liquid. I once had a rum that came directly out of a still when I was in Haiti, and it truly was one of the worst things that I have ever put into my mouth. It was the equivalent of moonshine, and the reason it tasted so bad is that it hadn't been filtered yet. Clear rums are often used in cocktails, whereas darker rums are often consumed straight or neat. As rum is made from any sugar, there's actually a rum in the Canary Islands that is made out of honey.

Our fourth spirit is gin. Gin is any distilled spirit that receives its flavor from juniper berries. Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs that can be found over much of the world. Gin starts out with a grain-based mash very similar to that of whiskey. Where it differs is that junipers and other botanicals are placed into the alcohol, usually before the distillation takes place. gin can also be made by infusing neutral already-instilled alcohol like vodka with juniper berries. The key is always the juniper in defining what gin is. There are several different types of gin, but of special note is slow gin.

Slow gin is technically not classified as a spirit, but rather as a liqueur, which I'll get to in a bit. The next spirit is tequila. Tequila is a distilled spirit made from the blue agave plant. Unlike other major classifications of spirits, which can be made pretty much anywhere, tequila has to be made in the vicinity of the city of tequila in the Mexican state of Halisco. Because the area where tequila can be made is so limited, there is an enormous amount of blue agave that is produced in the region. About 300 million blue agave plants are harvested every year. Similar tequila is mescal, which is made from any type of agave plant, not just the blue

Gave. 90% of mescal is produced in the Mexican state of Wohaca, but it can be made anywhere in Mexico. The final class of spirit is vodka. Vodka is sort of the opposite of tequila insofar as it can be made anywhere out of almost anything. Vodka is basically just water and ethanol. Vodka can be made from grains, as well as potatoes. There are also versions of vodka made from sugar, fruit, honey, and syrup. The only thing that they all have in common is that the end result tends to be clear. It's most popular in countries in northern and eastern Europe, and vodka itself is a Slavic word. Vodka tends to have higher alcohol levels than other spirits, but this isn't a requirement, and there's a great deal of variation amongst spirits in this area.

Vodkas are also often infused with flavors to cut down on the harsh taste. Those are the six major types of spirits, and as I mentioned, that list is not exhaustive. Now, however, I want to talk about liqueurs. A liqueur is not a fancy way of saying liquor. A liqueur is a spirit that has had flavoring and or sweeteners added to the drink after distillation. There are many different types of liqueurs, including cordials and schnops. There is an enormous amount of variety in liqueurs because you can add pretty much anything to a spirit to make a liqueur. One of my favorite liqueurs is chartreuse. Chartreuse is created at a single distillery owned by a monastery in Grenoble, France. It's made with a recipe dating back

to 1605 and consists of a distilled spirit that is aged with 130 different herbs, plants, and flowers. The recipe is a secret known only to two monks. The color chartreuse actually comes from the color of the liqueur. Other popular liqueurs, many of which are brands, include Amaretto, Lemoncello, Yeagermeister, Bailey's Irish Cream, Kaluua, Sambuca, Ozu and St. Germain. The subject of spirits and liqueurs is a surprisingly complicated one. I've only given a cursory overview of the subject, and for each of the spirits I've mentioned,

I could probably do an entire episode. Today, the global spirits market is in over $500 billion business, and producers can be found in the majority of the countries on Earth. And that's not too bad for a product that came from a technique used by ancient Babylonians to make perfume. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener Beavmar over on Podcast Addict.

They write, Gary, thank you for a great podcast that makes learning quick and fun. I'm hoping the keys to the Orlando Completionist Club will be in the mail in the next few days. Keep up the great work. Thanks, Bevemar. You should receive your keys any day now. And by the way, keys for the Orlando chapter will be personally delivered by a Disney character in costume. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it run on the show.