Hard drink: it’s a local thing

All over the world, people have - for some three thousand years plus - been distilling. The earliest instances that we know of were perfume: the Babylonians were cheeky feckers. The liked a nice smell. However there has to be a reasonable chance that distilling is much older than that, given that the Sumerians were making beer 7,000 years back and someone somewhere there must have thought: I wonder what happens if…

Since then many have inherited or re-discovered the art of heating and condensing. I am here concerned with production of strong liquor. There is a compelling reality to the drive for humans to produce hard alcohol: it happens the world over - and has for centuries. Where it is prohibited, people still find ways to do it. In Saudi Arabia - where the punishments are severe for manufacturing any alcohol, never mind a hard one - there is still a closeted industry producing Arak, dangerous though ths local brew is.

Oppression does not lead to quality. Saudi Arak is reputed to be horrible and dangerous. However Saudi Arak is still part of the lexicon, part of the library of hard alcohols. And that’s important, as strong alcohol, for all the terrible harm it does (undoubtedly), is also a source of immense inspiration, joy and creativity to so many. From the brutal (and blindness inducing) distillate of palm wine in West Africa through to the unbelievably carefully and excitingly produced Aquavit in Norway or - my current love, cherry Kirsch from Switzerland. Into this same genre fits the huge breadth of whisk and whiskey, brandy, and vodkas, and then the rice and other distillates of the east.

This may turn into a series on hard alcohols from around the world: how they taste, how they are produced - and where you can get them. I’ll start with some of that Swiss joy.