100 books like Drink

Patrick (Dr. Pat) McGovern, the Indiana Jones of ancient alcoholic beverages, takes the reader on a roller coaster ride through the nine extreme brewed beverages of history. On these journeys, McGovern is at once an archaeologist, a chemist, and a homebrewer.  His book is an amazing compilation of the mechanics of brewing both ancient and modern, and a wonderful comment on the human propensity for drinking and enjoying fermented and brewed beverages. It includes some recipes and food pairings for the ancient brews it describes. This book is a must-have for any beer aficionado, brewer, homebrewer, or even your everyday barstool cowboy.

Can spirits have terroir, or does it only apply to wine? Texas distiller Rob Arnold travels around the world's whiskey distilleries to investigate - well, not having bottomless pockets or time, he goes to distilleries in the USA, Ireland, and Scotland.

As well as being the master distiller at the TX Distillery, he's also doing a PhD in plant breeding and genetics at Texas A&M University. He approaches this as a scientist - first you have to know what you mean by terroir before you can decide whether whiskey has it or not.

I found the first half of the book - the scientific half - a bit heavy-going, but it was worth persevering to get to the distillery visits and read his conclusions on whether whiskey has terroir or not.

This enormous volume is not for the faint of heart – or for the thin of wallet – but it is the most comprehensive account available of the many hundreds of different grape varieties that are made into wine. It is the varietal that makes the greatest contribution to the characteristics of each wine and that helps make each bottle you open distinctive, and Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding and José Vuillamoz profile nearly 1,400 grape varieties providing descriptions and thumbnail histories and the latest DNA-based conclusions on how they are all related. If this book does not start you thirsting to open a Graševina, a Nosiola, or a Tribidrag at the earliest opportunity, nothing will!

Proof is a fascinating read about the science of booze. If you think that sounds a little dull and academic, it isn't. I bought it at the recommendation of a writer friend, Reid Mitenbuler (author of Bourbon Empire), and was so glad I did.

It delves into the science of creating alcohol, but in a way that the general reader can enjoy: a fungus called yeast eats up sugar and poops out ethanol, in layman's terms. But it goes way beyond that into what makes us want and enjoy a drink, what's happening in our brains and our bodies, and, yes, the science of hangovers.

The first book I read by British novelist Kingsley Amis was Lucky Jim, one of the greatest satires on academic life ever written (I do not, however, recommend reading it when you are applying for a teaching position as I foolishly did, since it will mess, mess, mess with your head). Amis enjoyed the drink far more than he should have, earning him the reputation, as he put it, “of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time.” His extensive familiarity with the bottom of a glass bore at least one good fruit. Everyday Drinking is a painfully witty, laugh-out-loud collection of essays and even quizzes on different kinds of alcohol from around the world. 

Patrick McGovern is an archeologist on a mission to discover ancient tipples. In Uncorking the Past he recounts several of his most significant finds, including the world’s oldest-known manmade alcoholic beverage at Jiahu, a nine-thousand-year-old site near the Yellow River in north-central China. The story of its discovery—and recreation with Dogfish Head Brewery—is fascinating, but the explanation of the role of alcohol in neolithic Chinese life makes it required reading.

With clear and engaging prose, Gaytan reveals the power dynamics that shaped tequila’s trajectory in Mexico and abroad.

She traces tequila’s meteoric rise past other agave-derived drinks like pulque and mezcal. I really appreciate how she approaches her study as a sociologist but does not eschew history in her analysis. Although ancient Mayas were among the first to produce and consume tequila, its association with modernity can be attributed, in part, to modern marketers disassociating tequila from indigenous inebriation.

Even as she firmly grounds tequila in lo Mexicano or being Mexican, Gaytan also explores tequila’s influence and popularity in the United States. Her book reminded me how different my experience of drinking tequila in the United States has been from my enjoyment of tequila in cantinas in Mexico. 

A fun read that explores the surprising history of alcohol used to treat medical maladies, from the Carthusian monks creating herbal elixirs, to the invention of tonic water to cure malaria.

English winds though the various maladies like wounds to worms to snakebites, and all the questionable, but delicious prescriptions, from gin and tonics to bourbon whiskey.

As a historian of alcohol, I sometimes get asked why I study something so niche; this book shows that alcohol history is anything but! The ten scholars who have contributed to Alcohol in Latin America cover issues of commerce, taxation, regulation, and state-building; the formation and expression of different ethnic, gender, class, and national identities; and concepts of progress, modernity, tradition, and authenticity. They discuss these issues over more than five hundred years of history, with reference to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the Andes, Guatemala, and Mexico, and by drawing on archaeological, anthropological, literary, and marketing studies. It is incredibly wide-ranging. As a wine-lover, I found the chapters by Nancy Hanway and Steve Stein tracing the development of the Argentine wine industry from the 1860s to the 1990s especially interesting. 

I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Tony Conigliaro’s Drink Factory laboratory in London where I found a mad scientist’s lair filled with complex, technical equipment, dry erase boards covered in formulas, and shelves of esoteric, bottled ingredients. While The Cocktail Lab finds a logical home in the era of molecular mixology, it is far more than that, showcasing its author as part chemist, part bartender, and part magician. First and foremost, the book captures what Conigliaro calls his “love affair with liquids”. The book’s cocktails – many of which I have tasted – are sensory experiences that capture not only flavors, but aromas, textures, and even memories. While modernizing many classic recipes, Conigliaro simultaneously pushes the definition of what a cocktail is and can be. For me, The Cocktail Lab celebrates the ever-evolving possibilities of liquid pleasure in the modern world and how a cocktail can be a transformative… show more.