In China, they make their wine from barley; in the northern parts thereof, from rice and apples. In Japan, also they prepare a strong wine from rice. We in England, likewise, have great variety of wines from cherries, apples, pears, &c. little inferior to those of foreign growth. In Brazil, and elsewhere, they make strong wine of water and sugarcane: and in Barbadoes they have many liquors unknown to us. Among the Turks, where wine of the grape is forbid by their law, the Jews and Christians keep, in their taverns, a liquor made of fermented raisins. The Sura in the East-Indies is made of the juice that flows from the cocoa-tree; and sailors have often been inebriated, in that country, with the liquors made of the fermented juices obtain’d by the incision of vegetables. We also learn that that the agave plant used to make Tequila is not a cactus but a member of the asparagus family, and that each plant yields enough sap to make about 250 gallons of maguay beer, which was drunk some 2K years ago. How do we know that; well it is because some scientist analyzed some 2k year old coprofites. :-0 Absinthe doesn't make you drunk [crazy] because of the wormwood being fermented but the fact that it was originally bottles at 70% ABV as opposed to Brandy commonly bottled at 40% ABV. Since it was 75% stronger you got drunk and started acting crazy much sooner than had you been drinking Brandy which was very commonly drunk when people favored absinthe. In this regard think of Henry Miller and Anais Nin.

We had arrived at a liquor store by then, and I was gesturing wildly at the shelves around us. "This is horticulture! In all of these bottles!"... Suddenly we weren't in a liquor store anymore. We were in a fantastical greenhouse, the world's most exotic botanical garden, the sort of strange and overgrown conservatory we only encounter in our dreams. ... We experimented further, and can recommend using honey and other natural sweeteners or post-infusion steeping with chile pequin or even habanero. Taste as you go. Our second batch was initially quite green, but soon faded to amber. Some of the most extraordinary and obscure plants have been fermented and distilled, and they each represent a unique cultural contribution to our global drinking traditions and our history. Molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence: when the British forced the colonies to buy British (not French) molasses for their New World rum-making, the settlers outrage kindled the American Revolution. Rye, which turns up in countless spirits, is vulnerable to ergot, which contains a precursor to LSD, and some historians have speculated that the Salem witch trials occurred because girls poisoned by ergot had seizures that made townspeople think they d been bewitched. Then there's the tale of the thirty-year court battle that took place over the trademarking of Angostura bitters, which may or may not actually contain bark from the Angostura tree. The reading of the audiobook version I have was also done very well. When the author talks about a drink, the reader hears a clinking sound. LOL.

There was also a nice and lengthy section on herbs made from the green or fleshy part of plants and spices made from the bark, root, stem, or seed of plants. Some fun science facts, "The DNA of apples is more complex than ours; a recent sequencing of the Golden Delicious genome uncovered fifty-seven thousand genes, more than twice as many as the twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand that humans possess."

Drunken botanists? Given the role they play in creating the world’s great drinks, it’s a wonder there are any sober botanists at all." Stewart does a wonderful job of clarifying misunderstandings and debunking popular myths throughout the book. " Mezcal is sometimes confused with mescaline, the psychoactive component of the peyote cactus Lophophora williamsii. In fact, the two are entirely unrelated, although peyote was sold in the nineteenth century as “muscale buttons,” leading to a linguistic misunderstanding that persists today." I like how the book jumps into the classics; that is those plants most commonly associated with alcohol.Amy Stewart has a way of making gardening seem exciting, even a little dangerous.” — The New York Times A well-balanced book..some history, some horticulture, and recipes too. The book is structured around the journey from the desired plant to still, to bottle, to glass.