The thinking drinker's guide to alcohol : a cocktail of amusing anecdotes and opinion on the art of imbibing

447 Pages·2014·10.13 MB·English

by  McFarland

T D ’
HINKING RINKER S
GUIDE TO
ALCOHOL
A C of
OCKTAIL
A A
MUSING NECDOTES
and O on the
PINION
A of I
RT MBIBING
BEN McFARLAND and TOM SANDHAM
STERLING EPICURE is a trademark of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
The distinctive Sterling logo is a registered trademark of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
First published in 2014 by Jacqui Small LLP, an imprint of Aurum Press as Thinking Drinkers Text ©
2014 Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham
Design and layout copyright © Jacqui Small 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4549-1549-2
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Dedication
To Thinking Drinkers Everywhere
CONTENTS
Introduction
BEER & CIDER
WINE
WHISKEY
TEQUILA
VODKA
RUM
GIN
APERITIFS, DIGESTIFS & NIGHTCAPS
Acknowledgments

Alcohol. One minute a soul mate, the next a psychopath, it pulls at the loose
threads of life with one hand yet weaves joy through it with the other. A fickle
fellow, it flips from faithful friend to fearsome foe in the space of a few small
sips, the pin loosening from the social grenade with every pour.
On occasions when it is consumed in excess, it shoves a stick in the spokes of
the central nervous system, decelerates brain activity, makes a mockery of your
motor function and makes numerous essential items such as keys, money and
mobile phones miraculously disappear.
After an initial euphoria, alcohol increases anxiety, slurs speech, aggravates any
anger you may have, exaggerates irritation and it can also cause memory loss. It
can also cause memory loss.
Mistreat it and it will mess you up, dropping you to your knees with nonchalant
indifference. Consistent and constant abuse leads to all manner of horrible
things: liver disease, diabetes, cancer and other ailments that no-one wants to
have to deal with.
But compared with water, booze is a mere drop in the bucket of disease and
death. Water has been spreading soluble sickness all over the world for
centuries. Cholera, dysentery, salmonella, typhoid, Legionnaires’ disease and,
lest we forget, the Bubonic Plague, are just some of the lurgies that have happily
lived in that most lethal of liquids. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Alcohol, meanwhile, has been the antidote to all of this. From the herbal wines
of Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, to modern-day alcoholic hand
gels (please don’t drink alcoholic hand gel, even if you’re really ill), the “water
of life” has been giving the grim reaper the runaround for centuries.
It’s also shaped the world as we know it. Not content with sowing the seeds of
early civilization, drink kept explorers alive during the Age of Discovery and as
any of history’s most prestigious leaders will tell you, from Alexander the Great
to Winston Churchill, there’s no better weapon in war than alcohol (not
including bombs, enormous guns and suchlike).
Alcohol has been instrumental in shaping the world’s religious landscape.
Europe, for a start, could perhaps have been an Islamic continent were it not for
drink. A distinct lack of booze impaired Islam’s advances into Europe during the
10th century when Vladimir of Kiev, the Russian ruler, was in the market for a
religion for his hitherto Pagan empire.
Kicking the tires of the various religions, Vlad was intrigued by Islam but simply
couldn’t stomach its strict no-booze policy. So he threw his considerable military
might behind Christianity instead, Islam was ushered out of Europe and the West
sidestepped a future of sobriety.
“Drinking,” exclaimed Vladimir, “is the joy of all Russia–we cannot exist
without that pleasure.” As the beleaguered dancing bear who he mercilessly
poked with a stick will no doubt testify, Vlad had a point.
Afforded the requisite level of reverence and respect, alcohol peddles more
pleasure than it does pain. Think of all the great things that have happened in
your life and, chances are, a drink has played at least a cameo role.
Alcohol unleashes your entire array of emotions–from virtuous indignation to
unabashed joy to sobbing snot-bubble sadness–often within the same evening.
It’s not drink that disguises us and veils our inner selves, it is sobriety; drink
peels away the layers of self-consciousness and kindly drops them in your top-
pocket where you can find them in the morning.
With each gentle bend of the elbow, drink rounds off the jagged edges of unease
and liberally applies a unique afterglow to everything around you. Drink
catalyzes camaraderie, it makes music sound better, companions more
compelling, conversations more absorbing and it even steadies our cue hand too.
As one glass blends into another, it sharpens our subconscious, it coaxes out
courage, confidence and creativity; it awakes our imagination and lights a fire
under the rocking chair of unadventurous ideas.
As Friedrich Nietzsche, a first class clever clogs, said: “For art to exist, for any
sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is
indispensable: intoxication.”
From Plato and Homer to André the Giant, Ernest Hemingway, Vincent van
Gogh and, of course, Norm Peterson from “Cheers,” abstinence would have
deprived us some of history’s greatest minds.
Yet, still, the shadowy forces of temperance swirl around us, demonizing drink
as a dark, malevolent force of questionable morality. Such crass condemnation
actively encourages bad behavior. How else are we to behave after ingesting the
devil drink?
As numerous anthropological studies have proven, different cultures and
societies react entirely differently to drink. What shapes drunken behavior is not
the alcohol itself but rather society’s expectations. It is in those societies where
drink is deemed as diabolical, where consumption is controlled and drunkenness
is almost expected, that bad behaviour tends to thrive.
The more we know about alcohol, the more we appreciate its potential for both
pain and pleasure and the more society deems it daft to be antisocial while
intoxicated, the less likely we are to abuse it. It’s not the drink that dictates our
behavior, it’s what we think.
What we mustn’t forget either, is that the first people to make alcohol on a
commercial scale were monks and, as everyone knows, there’s nothing nicer or
more sensible than a monk. It’s their job. And their boss is God and so if it’s
alright with him then, well, it should be alright with everyone else.