Alcoholic beverages were made as long ago as the sixth millennium B. C., as has been documented by the discovery of wine remains in a container at Qatal Huyuk, an archaeological site on the Konya Plain in Turkey (Mellaart 1967). It is probable, however, that wine was produced from dates and figs even earlier (Tannahill 1988). Beer (or, more properly, ale) was in use in ancient Sumer by at least 2500 B. C. and at about that time, or soon afterward, in Egypt (Lichine 1981).
As populations became more crowded, with consequent pollution of water supplies, nearly everyone drank ale or wine. The Romans scorned the ale of the Germanic tribes but made wine a regular part of their own daily regime (Pliny 1940). As a rule, it was mixed with hot water, spices, and perhaps honey (Lichine 1981). People who drank undiluted wine were thought to be depressed or alcoholic (or both), which suggests that the Romans probably would not have been interested in diverting their distillation techniques from alchemy to the production of beverages stronger than wine, even had they thought of it (Tan-nahill 1988).
Nonetheless, some investigators have sought the origins of distilled beverages in ancient Rome. Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) mentioned a “wine” that had to be diluted several times before it could (or should) be drunk (Pliny 1940). But this reference is to a wine kept in ceramic vessels and allowed to evaporate over many years, until the result was a thick sludge (Lichine 1981). Pliny also wrote of Falernian wine that could be ignited, that would keep for a decade, and that was strong in flavor. But at that time, wine was often boiled down into a kind of jelly to season foods and make drinks, and it was already known that the vapor from hot wine could be ignited. Thus, in the absence of archaeological evidence of “worm” coils or other kinds of still-head cooling devices, it appears that the manufacture of distilled spirits, at least on any large scale, remained in the future (Needham 1984).
The Greek alchemists, whose stills are portrayed in drawings from the Hellenistic period, may have preceded the Romans in producing small amounts of alcohol. Alchemy, which originated in Egypt and Persia and was then practiced by the Greeks and the Arabs, was a quasi-magical process by which the alchemist sought the “essence” of matter to perfect it in accordance with mystical laws (Needham 1984). Arab alchemists produced a cosmetic eye makeup, the name of which - kohl or kuhl - conveyed the notion of something fine and subtle emerging from a process of distillation, and it was from al-kohl (or al-kuhl), and various subsequent renderings like the Portuguese dlcool, that the English word “alcohol” was derived (Forbes 1948).
Moreover, despite the Islamic prohibition against alcohol consumption, the. Arabs are credited, at least in legend, with the spread of liquor to Europe. One well-known account, set in the early fifth century, tells the story of an Irish monk - who later became Saint Patrick - spreading the gospel in the Near East. There, he learned about stills and, on his return to Ireland, brought one with him (McGuire 1993). A more modern version of the tale has the Crusaders learning about alcohol and distillation from the. Arabs and bringing home to Europe both taste and technique. Whether there is truth in either story, the historical record of these centuries does not indicate any widespread use of distilled spirits that would also have triggered their widespread misuse - a misuse that certainly would have rated mention in the literature (Schivelbusch 1992).
Distillation, then, continued to remain the property of the alchemists, who in the Middle Ages were distilling water hundreds of times over, reducing it to a residue of mineral salts that was said to be its “essence” (Forbes 1948). About A. D. 800, the Arab scholar Jabir ibn Hayyan invented a much-improved still, and during the centuries from 800 to 1000, Arab alchemists are said to have distilled wine, with its resulting “essence” employed in still further alchemical experimentation (Toussaint-Samat 1987).This may have been the first time that brandy was made. But with alcohol consumption forbidden by the Islamic religion, there was little incentive to distill such beverages in any quantity (Forbes 1948).
Meanwhile, in China, rice wine - chiu (actually an ale) - had long been produced and was as popular there as were grape wines in the West; Chinese ales made from millet also had been brewed for some time (Simoons 1991). However, the fermentation procedure used to make rice wine generally resulted in a stronger beverage than Western ales and beers (Chang 1977).
Like Greece and the Arab world, China also had its alchemists, but Chinese stills were different from those used in the West, having a tube on the side to drain the distillate and allow more of it to be produced. Although the date when this type of still originated is unknown (Needham 1984), fourth-century documents mention a “wine” from the “western regions” that kept for a long time and was extremely strong. This beverage might have been produced by Chinese stills; however, noted sinologist Joseph Needham (1984) has suggested that it came not from Chinese stills but from remote regions of central Asia, where a technique of concentrating alcohol by freezing it had been invented. Although Needham believes that such a technique was a precursor to distillation, he acknowledges that the evidence is confusing and that the references that describe this particular beverage are ambiguous. Moreover, one authority has suggested that, given the paucity of references to distilled spirits in Chinese history (until relatively recently), even if liquor were known, its use could hardly have been common (Simoons 1991).
By the fourteenth century, however, this may no longer have been the case. The Ying-shih ssu-chi, a medical work dated to 1368, draws attention to the dangers of overindulgence in distilled alcoholic beverages, and Li Shih Chen (writing in the sixteenth century) stated that liquor had reached China only with the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Chang 1977). Chen mentioned such beverages as “fire wine” and “burnt wine,” equating the latter with arrack or distilled palm wine. It is interesting to note that this chronology of alcohol use in China parallels that of brandy, and perhaps even whiskey, in Europe (Simoons 1991).
From about 1000 to 1500, alchemists in Europe repeatedly distilled wine (adding salts to absorb the water portion of the liquid) to produce a distillate that would burn. That the eleventh-century Italian alchemist and scholar Michael Salernus had successfully produced alcohol, for example, is indicated by the following statement: “A mixture of pure and very strong wine with three parts salt distilled in the usual vessel, produces a liquid which will flame up when set on fire but which leaves other substances unburnt” (McCusker 1989: 85). (In Salernus’s original manuscript, the words underlined here are written in cipher to prevent others from learning his procedures and formulas.)
Salernus was not alone in reporting such results, and collectively, the alchemists believed that they had extracted the “essence” or “spirit” of wine and that repeated distillations resulted in aqua vitae - the “water of life” - which, in this case, was a kind of brandy that until about 1400 was used mostly as a medicine (Braudel 1973). Because the processes of aging and the separation of the different fractions of the distillate were unknown, this liquor would have been harsh, and even harsher if bad wine had been used for the distillation.
Albertus Magnus was another distiller and alchemist who wrote about the virtues of this substance. Its potency seemed to recommend it as a treatment for a variety of illnesses. Indeed, the distillate was acclaimed as the “quintessence,” a union of all the elements, even the key to everlasting life (Schivel-busch 1992).
The first real brandy that was not thought of as medicine is said to have been distilled in 1300 by Arnaldus de Villa Nova, a professor at the medical school of Montpelier. He said: “We call it aqua vitae, and this name is really suitable, since it is really a water of immortality” (Christian 1990: 25). On the other hand, both the Irish and the Scots claim to have produced liquor from grain (in contrast to brandy from wine) since the beginning of the last millennium; the Scots called it uisge beatha (pronounced wisky-baw), and the Irish called it uisce beatha. Both meant “water of life,” and the English term “whiskey” derived from them.
The precise dates when Irish and Scotch whiskeys originated may never be known. But we do know that, in the aftermath of Henry Il’s invasion of Ireland (A. D. 1171), Irish “wine” was taxed. The reference to “wine” could mean honey mead, or ale, but it might also mean whiskey. Indeed, the Old Bushmills brand claims its origin from this date, suggesting that even if the St. Patrick tale is a bit fanciful, whiskey from the Emerald Isle may well have predated brandy in Europe, at least for recreational purposes (McGuire 1993). Certainly the archaeological discovery of a worm cooler and alembic pots in Ulster suggests that at least some distillation had taken place in Ireland by the late Middle Ages (McGuire 1993). However, the size of the vessels indicates domestic distillation on a small scale (E. C. 1859).
In the fifteenth century, better methods of cooling a still’s head were developed, and these allowed increased production of distilled beverages (Forbes 1948). The technology spread quickly across Europe, and practically every country developed its own national distilled spirit. Those countries also soon developed laws to tax, restrict, and sometimes even ban such spirits, because by the sixteenth century, drunkenness had become a serious social problem.
People who had previously drunk beer as if it were water were discovering that they could not drink liquor as if it were beer (Schivelbusch 1992).
Centuries earlier, Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus) had employed the. Arabic term alcool vini to describe spirits. But it was not until 1730, when the Dutch physician Herman Boerhave used the word alcohol to mean distilled spirits, that it became commonly understood that ale, wine, and distilled beverages all owed their mood-altering capabilities to this chemical (Forbes 1948).Yet because “aqua vitae” and other such appellations continued to be used, it is difficult to discover exactly what kinds of spirits were actually being produced. Indeed, even Scotch whiskey was called aqua vitae (Jackson 1988).
From this point forward, however, the historical picture is sufficiently clear to permit treatment of the individual liquors, and we will attempt to do this in some semblance of chronological order. But before we begin, a word or two is needed about the strength, or “proof,” of an alcoholic beverage. The term proof originated in connection with the early use of gunpowder in war: “Proof,” or good, armor was that which proved resistant to a gunshot. The word entered alcohol terminology as a means of identifying the quality of rum and brandy. “Proof” beverages were of the approved strength - half spirit and half water (McCusker 1989). Their purity could be measured by weighing or by setting the spirit alight. Later, the term came to mean twice the percentage of alcohol in the drink. In the twentieth century, neutral spirit leaving the mechanical still is 180 proof, or 90 percent alcohol (Grossman 1989).
World History
