The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks
By Amy StewartAlgonquin Books, March 2013
Just 30 pages into The Drunken Botanist, I’d already learned more about the biology, technology, and cultural history of making alcoholic drinks than I’d known all my life. Hops are related to cannabis, agave to asparagus. Yeast is one of the earliest domesticated organisms (but brewers still treasure the flavor enhancement from wild varieties that colonize their vats or fall in on insects). Tequila stills originated in the Philippines. Apples have twice as many genes as we do. The first (and toxic) “head” of gin distillation yields an industrial cleaner. Reading out loud, I had everyone at the family dinner table making lists of whom to give the book to.
But when Amy Stewart has covered the basic alcoholic alchemy—transmuting barley, corn, and rye to beer and whiskey; grapes to wine and brandy; rice to sake; potatoes to vodka; sugar cane to rum; bananas, tamarind, cassava, and more into exotic brews—with ample asides on artisanal potatoes, the best oak species for casks, etc., she’s still just getting started. Two more sections detail the botany and culture of herbs, barks, fruits, and flowers used for infusing and flavoring beverages. Lore lovers, pull up a bar stool and prepare to drink it all in.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34796/title/Capsule-Reviews/
Via @NPR: 'Drunken Botanist' Takes A Garden Tour Of The Liquor Cabinet http://n.pr/108xoVN
