The back bar
This is my back bar. Each entry says what a spirit is, which cocktails it belongs in, how to buy it and where the popular stories go wrong.
whiskey · distillation
Corn or rye in the mash, new charred oak around it, and a federal rulebook that says nothing about Kentucky. How the two American whiskeys are made, what the labels promise, and where each belongs in a glass.
6 min read · 8 sources
rum · distillation
Fresh cane juice, a quick ferment, a single pass through the still, and a forest of native woods to rest in. Cachaca is Brazil's own spirit by law and by habit, and the Caipirinha is only the beginning.
6 min read · 6 sources
brandy · distillation
Wine turned into spirit, then handed to oak. Cognac's six crus and two-pass Charentais stills, Armagnac's single column and vintages, calvados and the grape brandies of the wider world, with the age letters decoded.
7 min read · 11 sources
gin · botanicals
Juniper is the law and everything else is the argument. London dry, Plymouth, Old Tom, genever and the contemporary styles, what they must be, how they are made, and which drinks each one serves best.
6 min read · 7 sources
brandy · distillation
Two countries, two legal definitions, one name. How Peruvian and Chilean pisco are made and categorized, why the dispute exists, and why the Pisco Sour and the Chilcano belong on any serious menu.
6 min read · 9 sources
rum · distillation
Molasses or fresh juice, pot or column, a week of wild fermentation or a day of clean yeast. Rum is the least standardized of the great spirits, and that is why its styles are worth learning one island at a time.
7 min read · 7 sources
sake · production
One brewed, two distilled, all three built on rice and koji rather than malt and oak. How sake is made and graded, what Korean soju became after 1965, how Japanese shochu keeps its ingredient in the glass, and how each works behind the bar.
7 min read · 12 sources
whiskey · distillation
Three traditions built on malt, grain and patience. The regulations that define each, the stills and casks behind them, the regions worth knowing, and the 2021 Japanese standard that finally said what Japanese whisky must be.
7 min read · 8 sources
agave · distillation
One plant family, two appellations, and a set of Mexican standards that say exactly what blanco, reposado, artesanal and ancestral mean. Also the worm, which was never in the tequila.
7 min read · 8 sources
distillation · production
The spirit defined by what was taken out. Where vodka comes from, how rectification works, what the law used to say about taste and what it says now, and the honest case for vodka in cocktails.
6 min read · 6 sources