"Distilled" or How Not To Write About Distilled Spirits

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                  “DISTILLED” OR HOW NOT TO WRITE 

                      ABOUT THE HISTORY OF SPIRITS

This month our readers will not find the customary article on the history of Cuban rum. Certainly not because the series is over, we are still just at the beginning, but because I thought it useful to dedicate this month’s space to the review of a book on spirits just published: Ian Tattersall and Rob Desalle’s “Distilled. A Natural History of Spirits”, 2022.

The authors are two eminent, renowned scientists: “Rob DeSalle is a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. Ian Tattersall is curator emeritus, division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History.” The two are also wine enthusiasts and a few years ago they published “A Natural History of Wine” and, later, “A Natural History of Beer.”  I read the first one and I liked it. I am not a wine expert, even though I drink it regularly, and as far as I can tell it is an excellent work, full of information and reflections, as well as skillfully written. 

Telmo Pievani is an eminent philosopher of and is part of a large international team of scientists studying evolution; he is also a great scientific populizer, very well known in my native country, Italy. In an interview with Ian Tattersall he mentions his new book about spirits. 

Pleasantly surprised, I searched for the book and bought it right away: at last, real scientists dedicate themselves to our favorite topic. When the book arrived, I discovered that, in addition to the two main authors, other academics had collaborated on individual chapters. Moreover, this book is published by the authoritative Yale University Press, and it is a beautiful object too: quality paper, good binding, beautiful designs; in short, everything. Also, I confess that I was filled with pride when I saw one of my “GOT RUM?” articles mentioned in the bibliography.

But then I read it and everything changed….

In a nutshell, the authors know little, and badly, about spirits, and even less about their history. Unfortunately, it seems to me that they know history in general little and badly. There are interesting parts, but also many banalities and above all many gross mistakes. And I got angry. It is not right to write so slovenly about spirits, even less if it is done by eminent scientists and if the text is published by an authoritative publishing house.

There are some positive things. The clarification on the taste of ethanol is undoubtedly useful, it explains much of the pleasure of drinking spirits: “ethanol is far from being a tasteless substance, as is often believed. Instead, once it rises above a concentration of about 20 percent by volume, well above anything you would expect to find in a conventional beer or wine, it imparts subtly bittersweet and uniquely mouth-filling quality that has yet to be replicated by any other substance.” 

There is also some interesting information about what might happen in the near future: “The notion of synthesizing a product to replace the alcohol that has traditionally been distilled brings us to the subject of synthetic alcohol substitutes. … if a synthetic substance could be produced that mimics the effect of alcohol without its side effects, many of the unwanted effects of alcohol would disappear. … Even better, antidotes could be administrated to counter their inebriating effects, allowing one to hop in one’s car and safely drive home after a night of drinking.” 

But then there are many things that are wrong. They are too many to list all of them, I will dwell just on the most glaring errors, simply in order of appearance. About the Column Still, they evidently don’t know that the French engineer Jean-Baptiste Cellier-Blumenthal, and not Aeneas Coffey, invented the first continuously working distillation column and patented it in 1813. They go on to write: “The big physical contrast between the pot still and the Coffey stills is the tall two-distilling-column setup in the Coffey still, versus the single and usually bulbous distilling vessel of the pot still. … most spirits categories on the market today may be made on either kind of still; and there are now ‘hybrid’ stills that make the original definitions and rules all the more confusing.”

False. As if the difference between Pot and Column still were merely a matter of design. Regarding this I think it is better to read again Richard Seal’s “Aeneas Coffey, John Dore and Foursquare”, RUM DIARIES BLOG, February 9, 2021. “The dichotomy is not pot still vs column still but batch still vs continuous still. All still designs fall into one of the latter two categories. The addition of fractionation or enhanced rectification to a batch still is still a batch still. The simple batch still relies solely on the lyne arm for rectification. Enhancing this effect does not change the fundamental nature of the still. …  A batch still will produce a changing output over time (colloquially the heads, then hearts, then tails) from a single charge (batch) that itself changes as it is distilled. A continuous still produces an unchanged output that varies by position (not by time) on an unchanging charge that is fed continuously. Heads, hearts, tails are drawn off simultaneously from different positions. This is the fundamental distinction between the two processes which also explains why the two can never make the identical spirit. …Early column shaped stills (e.g. the column Pistorius still) should not be confused with a column or continuous still, it was a batch still and the Savalle or Cellier Blumental stills are not fitted with “a pot still” just because they had a pot shaped base/kettle – there were in fact continuous (or column) stills.”

Let’s go on.  According to our authors, Arnald of Villanueva (1233-1312) “was the earliest European author to refer to spirits as aqua vitae (water of life), and to describe them as ‘the essence of wine’. He also provided the first detailed instructions for distillation”

False. If they had read Forbes, or even some of my articles of the series THE ORIGIN OF ALCOHOLIC DISTILLATION IN THE WEST, they would know that even before   Villanueva, there was a great proliferation of authors and works discussing the distillation of wine and the production of aqua vitae for medicinal purposes. For instance, the Franciscan friar Bonaventura Da Iseo, who died in 1280, stands out among those with his “Liber Compostille”.

A great friend of Albertus Magnus, close to Roger Bacon and in contact with the young Thomas Aquinas, and therefore in touch with the greatest minds of the time, the friar described the numerous medicinal waters that were by that time commonly used in medicine, including the production of alcohol, with distillation of both essences for making rosewater and wine for the production of aqua vitae. They haven’t heard of Taddeo Alderotti either (circa 1210-1296), the most famous physician of his age, who with his work Consilia made known to the general public the term aqua vitae, its uses in medicine and how to distill it.

One thing that really struck me is that the authors do not know the classic, fundamental work by R.J. Forbes “Short History of the Art of Distillation”. Yet, one of their sources, Norbert Kockmann, in his “History of Distillation” 2014, writes clearly that “To get a wider picture, however, it is also necessary to consult the secondary literature. Robert Forbes (1943) gives an extensive illustration of the history of the art of distillation until 1840 and the death of Cellier-Blumenthal.” 

And here is a real blooper; at the beginning of chapter 7 SPIRIT TREES, they write: “For this chapter we just had to try the Grand Daddy of all New World spirits: arrack originated on the early Portuguese plantations in the Canary Islands.”   

Doubly false. First: Arrack is not “the Grand Daddy of all New World spirits”. Arrack (arak, raki, rakija, etc) is an Old World word that in most of Asia indicated, and still indicates, spirits in general.  “Batavia Arrack”, whose label they show, is produced (probably from rice and sugarcane) precisely in Batavia, that is, present day Java and not in the Canary Islands. Second: there were no “early Portuguese plantations in the Canary Islands”! The Canary Islands were colonized by the Spanish, not by the Portuguese, and they are still a part of Spain, as can be seen in any map. 

Let’s now get to chapter 14 RUM (AND CACHAÇA) by Susan Perkins and Miguel A. Acevedo “Sugar remained an extremely precious commodity, however, because the towering grass could only be grown in wet, tropical climate very far from Europe.”  

False. Before the discovery and colonization of the Atlantic Islands, sugarcane was widely cultivated and sugar produced in Cyprus, Sicily and Spain. Only the development of the American plantations put Sicilian sugar out of business for good, whereas in Spain sugarcane cultivation continued until just a few years ago. Indeed, in southern Spain the last zafra was in 2006.

Later in the same chapter, “Column distilling allows for near-continuous production and will yield a significantly more consistent product, with far less energy wasted. The process was patented by Aeneas Coffey in 1830 and involved two connected columns. Eventually these two-columns stills gave rise to more complex stills with three or more column, yielding more complex and individual rums.” 

False. As mentioned above, Jean-Baptiste Cellier-Blumenthal, and not Aeneas Coffey, invented the first continuously working distillation column and patented it in 1813. Besides, as is well known, column stills did not produce “more complex and individual rums”, but, on the contrary, a more “neutral” spirit.  See the proceedings of THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON WHISKEY AND OTHER POTABLE SPIRITS (1908) in January to May 2020 issues of “GOT RUM?”.

And again: “Rum is now successfully produced in more than thirty countries around the world, but its home base and the center of its identity is firmly in the Caribbean.”  

False. Rum is now produced in many more countries, around a hundred, including, just to give a few examples, the USA, Scotland, Denmark and also Italy. The largest rum-producing countries are India and the Philippines. Regarding Cuba, “In 1762, however, the British briefly occupied the country, not even for a full year but long enough to introduce rum production, which was continued when Spain resumed its command.”  

False. Rum was already largely produced in Cuba well before the British occupation, as I demonstrated in the articles of the series HISTORY OF CUBAN RUM.

And, “Brazil was the most important producer of sugar and its fermented derivatives in the sixteenth century, with Dutch settlers controlling production. During the Pernambuco insurrection of 1817, the Dutch were expelled from Brazil and settled in Caribbean islands.”  

False. The Dutch West India Company occupied the north eastern coastal region of Brazil (more or less, present day state of Pernambuco, capital Recife) in 1624 and were definitively expelled in 1654.

Last but not least, in one of the last chapters we find that Marie Brizard marketed the first anisette in 1755. “Sadly, the spirit of innovation ushered in by Marie’s product was summarily snuffed out by the 1787 French Revolution, which put an end to everything that might have been considered a luxury.” 

Well, the claim that the French Revolution “put an end to everything that might have been considered a luxury” is highly questionable. For example, sugar and rum consumption became widespread in France right during the Revolution. But, most importantly, I do not know of any French Revolution in 1787, while I know of one, and of some importance, in 1789.

I think that’s enough. I’d like to repeat what I wrote at the beginning: it is not right to write so badly about spirits, and even less if those who do are eminent scientists and if the book is published by an authoritative publishing house. It’s a lack of respect towards our whole world, but even more towards human knowledge in general. We live in a complicated world, difficult to understand and the problem of correct information and fake news is under everyone’s eyes. But in this case, there are no major economic or political interests at stake; there is therefore no interest on the part of anyone in manipulating the information or spreading wrong information to gain advantages. Well, if not even in this case, when the writers are prestigious academics and their work is published by a major publishing house, we can trust what we read, then our future worries me, a lot.

Marco Pierini