Baime - Big shots: the men behind the booze

You cannot drown yourself in drink. Ive tried. You float.
John Barrymore

A bout twelve thousand years ago, or maybe closer to two hundred thousand years ago (who knows for sure?), someone discovered alcoholby mistake. To this person, whoever he or she is, a toast should be raised, especially considering the strange particulars of how it probably went down. There are any number of theories, but the following is the most plausible:

It was a broiling hot day in the Mideastvery likely in what is presently Iranand some tribesmen were foraging for fruit. They liked grapes in particular. The wild fruit balls were colorful and seductive, bunches of little orbs that exploded with sweet juice when you bit down on them, each with a seed that assured there would be more to eat tomorrow. As they toiled, the tribesmen grew thirsty. The sun burned above them like the sizzling yolk of a giant egg frying in the sky. Their lips cracked, and their tongues hung out of their mouths. Water was a scarce commodity. There wasnt enough to go around, and every drop counted.

At the end of the day, the tribesmen retired to where they kept their fruit. Tired and thirsty, one noticed that, in a large container filled with grapes, the weight of the pile had crushed the fruit at the bottom, and some juice had leaked out. The man reached down and scooped up some of the juice using a container of some sort, perhaps a cup whittled out of wood. First he sniffed the juice. The stuff gave off a strange smellsickly sweet and pungent. There mightve been insects crawling in it. But the guy was thirsty, so he sipped nervously. And then he sipped again. And again. Seeing that it was safe, he gulped down the whole lot.

Slowly a tender feeling began to overcome him. The tight sinews in his neck and back began to relax. A strange numbness spread into his limbs, as if tiny spiders were crawling through his veins. He felt dizzya soft, warm buzz. Hours later, he was busted for driving a stolen car while intoxicated, with a cross-dresser in the passenger seat who was later identified as Winston Churchill, the greatest drunk of all time.

Thus alcohol as we know it was born. Or thats my version anyway. There is at least one more commonly accepted theorythat a woman, a member of the harem of an ancient mythological Persian king named Jemsheed, discovered alcohol. Apparently, this king loved grapes so much that he collected and preserved them. Some of the grapes rotted, turned to mush, and fermented. Seeing that the fruit had turned sour, the king placed it in a vessel, labeled it poison, and lodged it in a vault. (Why he didnt just throw it out is anyones guess.) Later, one of his harem, while suffering from a devastating migraine, drank some of the poison in hopes of killing herself. After she drank the grape juice, the headache disappeared and the woman was overcome by a strange ecstasy. According to the legend, the king caught on and began cultivating grapes for wine production. To this day, wine in the Mideast is sometimes referred to as zeher-e-khoosh, or the delightful poison.

Whichever theory you accept, the facts remain the same. The dust on the fruit had yeast in it. When the fruit rotted, the natural sugars had mingled with the yeast on the skins and the juice had fermentedliterally turned from water into wine.

From that moment in the Neolithic Period onward, ethyl alcohol (C2H5OH) would become a staple in nearly every burgeoning civilization across the globe. Later on, in the twelfth century (though some argue it was much earlier), European monks would have the bright idea to boil wine and collect the vaporsa process known as distillation. Since alcohol vaporizes at a lower temperature than water, the monks realized it was possible to separate it from other ingredients, to concentrate its strength. Then the fun really began.

Its no coincidence that, as different cultures around the world discovered the alchemy of distillation, many chose the same name for their drinks. The monks of the Dark Ages in Europe named their distilled spirits aqua vitaewater of life in Latin. Early Scottish distillers called whiskey usquebaughwater of life in Gaelic. The Poles called their liquor shiznennia vodkawater of life in Slavic. The French called brandy eau-de-vie. You get the point. Wherever knowledge spread, alcohol followed, made out of whatever ingredients were on hand.

Now jump forward a few hundred years. Youre standing in a bar in the twenty-first century, staring at liquor bottles, tapping your foot to a Johnny Cash tune. Spread out before you are myriad drink choices: rums, vodkas, whiskies, gins, tequilas. Some are as clear as water; others are the color of polished copper, amber brown, or a gold so rich it looks as if the sun had melted into a bottle. The exotic liquids come from all four corners of the earth, different nectars exuding different flavors and scents, with brand names and marketing slogans written in strange tongues. You ask yourself, how did drinking go from the water of life days to the bizarre mix of branded mass-marketed stuff we drink today?