Talk-A-Vino

We are continuing the historical angle here, but stepping aside from the softer world of wine into the brave and powerful world of strong spirit (yeah, I know you can read it in different ways) – I’m  talking about so called hard liquors.

Hard liquors came about some time in 14th – 15th centuries, when the alchemists of all walks were perfecting distillation process in their search for the ways to turn everything into a gold (or maybe they were searching for eternal life elixir?). It was quickly discovered that the hard liquors have a great range of effects on humans, from giving them pleasure to making them completely crazy and even killing them. During the course of history, hard liquors played wide variety of roles, from being an object of trade, a currency, to the object of desire and status symbol (Louis XIII, anyone?).

Each spirit has it’s own rich and unique history, full of all the human drama, discovery, excitement, love, hate and everything else which constitutes life (it is not for nothing French call some of their liquors Eau de Vie, a Water of Life). And of course each spirit affected hundreds of millions of lives throughout its course of history. However, there is one hard liquor which can be singled out for its role in the history of western civilization, where it was even an essential part of the slavery trade (the whole process was called “slavery triangle”), and its status was dramatically affected by the American Revolution. Do you know what spirit it is?

Have a fun filled weekend! Cheers!