Alcademics

Tag: history

  • Paloma History – Tracing the Facts and Fiction about this Tequila Cocktail’s History

    I'm still searching for the first book reference to La Paloma, the cocktail with tequila, grapefruit soda, a squeeze of lime, and a dash of salt. However we know enough information about the drink's history – especially the false parts of the drink's history – to push the conversation forward. 

    Finding the False Lead: Popular Cocktails of the Rio Grande

    For years, the Wikipedia entry for this drink cited a first reference as coming from Popular Cocktails of the Rio Grande, and this reference was cited and spread throughout the internet. Nobody could seem to find a reference to this book though. The answer to this mystery comes from Jeremy Foyd of the Distinguished Spirits YouTube channel. As he mentions in his video entry for the Paloma, the reference is a clearly fake. 

    Jeremy Foyd and I emailed back and forth about it, and here's what Foyd had to say:

    In terms of Popular Cocktails of the Rio Grande, I really dug into that one. The book was not registered with the Copyright Office and no one named Evan Harrison has registered works. That doesn’t mean anything definitively if it was self-published, but if it was self-published, it may also be a red flag in terms of authenticity.

    The references to Rio Grande only date back to when it first appeared on Wikipedia. The first references to Rio Grande popped up almost a year to the day when it first appeared on Wikipedia. The first reference to Rio Grande was Feb 17 2013 and Rio Grande was added to Wikipedia on Feb 16 2012. Its first entry on Wikipedia was not cited in the References and Sources sections. The entry was made at 2am from a cell phone in Connecticut. The location in CT was about 2 hours outside Cambridge, MA.

    The subsequent 12 changes to the Rio Grande Wikipedia entry all happened between Nov 9, 2013 and Nov 30, 2013. Each entry, with the exception of one, was made from an IP address in Cambridge, MA. All of the entries embellished, changed and gave more and more elaborate and obviously bogus details to the story. One of the changes was the following:

    The first published recipe for The Paloma is attributed to Evan Harrison in a 1953 pamphlet entitled, "Popular Cocktails of The Rio Grande" but it was thought to be created by rival tavern manager Manuel Gonzales who named it for his true love. Manuel had courted her for many years but when Evan published the drink in his pamphlet Manuel in a fit of jealous rage arrived to her small pueblo of La Guadalupe del Tortugas and shot both her and himself in front of her family at her Fiesta de quince años . Legend has it his last words were "con limon, no es pomelo." Which is a crazy story, because is means the rival tavern manager started courting this girl when she was 11, in order to kill her at her 15th birthday party 4 years later. But such was life in 1950's Mexico.

    Clearly just spam. Then a moderator pulled the reference to Rio Grande from the Wikipedia page and no one tried to add it back.

    There is a bartender who has worked at several bars in the Cambridge area named Evan Harrison. He currently works at two places, one of which, Mamaleh’s, he owns a piece of. Evan’s jokey profile on Mamaleh’s website says, "EVAN HARRISON. OWNER / BAR MANAGER. Is a bartender from Texas with a dual degree in feminist studies and a language he doesn’t speak who, according to some sources, invented the Paloma cocktail fifty years before he was born."

    Here’s my hypothesis on this situation, it seems like Evan or Evan’s buddies, put this up on Wikipedia maybe as a joke. Then almost two years later, elaborated on that joke to make it obvious that it was spam. When the adult in the room caught on, they pulled the reference and the pranksters let it die. But by then it had already been cited in a couple blogs and other bloggers just passed along the bogus info.

    Anyway, looking at all of that has made me fairly confident that this was a joke that got out of hand and I’m certain that Popular Cocktails of the Rio Grande does not exist.

    Excellent sleuthing Mr. Foyd. 

    8/24/18: Update to this story: I received an email about the Harrison Hoax which clears things up. It turns out that wasn't the only drink that lead to some false founder assertions on the internet. A bartender writes: 

    In 2009 a couple of ridiculous jokesters from Drink [Boston] decided to make changes to some wikipedia pages on cocktails to see who would notice it. No one around us except our friends cared about drinks and we were curious how long it would take to see it changed back (I won't reveal the exact people who made this change). There were some funny consequences. From what I remember the following edits were posted: Misty Kalkofen invented the Margarita,Scott Marshall invented the Mai Tai, John Gertsen the Sazerac, Josey Packard the Old Fashioned, and I was listed as inventing the Bijou (which wasn't edited out until about 2 or 3 years ago).  

     

    Don Javier of La Capilla

    The other popular theory is that the Paloma was created by Don Javier of the famous bar in the town of Tequila, Mexico, called La Capilla. Don Javier has denied creating the Paloma, according to Jim Meehan in his new Meehan's Bartender Manual. 

     

    The Squirt and Grapefruit Connection

    Meehan reached out to me a while back as I had done some research on the Paloma for a presentation I gave years ago. Meehan says in his book that he first saw the recipe in David Wondrich's 2005 book Killer Cocktails, and further that "Neither the combination of ingredients nor the name appears in any recipe guides before this, despite Squirt's being imported to Mexico in 1955 and the maker's claim that it became popular as a mixer in cocktails like the Paloma in the 1950s." 

     

    The latter bit of information about Squirt came from my research. I found the following curious timeline on the Squirt website. It claims that the soda was used for Palomas in the early 1950s, yet it wasn't exported to Mexico until 1955. (If we take this to be true, that means the Paloma is actually an American drink.)

     

    Squirt in paloma

    Here is what I found researching grapefruit sodas and grapefruit generally:

    Squirt soda was invented in 1938 in Phoenix, AZ. As far as I can find, it was the first commercial grapefruit soda. Other grapefruit sodas are:

    • Squirt created 1938 
    • Rummy, a short-lived soda created in 1948
    • 1950 Jarritos created (no grapefruit initially)
    • 1955: Squirt first exported to Mexico
    • 1966: Fresca invented
    • 1976: Ting created

    Grapefruit production in Mexico didn't take off until the 1960s, according to some citrus research I did.

    My belief, based on intuition ab0out how cocktails come to be and the timeline of grapefruits in Mexico, is that the Paloma never existed before grapefruit soda did. I doubt that there is a tradition of fresh grapefruit used in the Paloma, but that's yet to be proven. 

    Back to David Wondrich, via Jim Meehan's book: "According to Wondrich, 'In the 1940s, you start seeing references in Mexico to 'changuirongo,' which is simply tequila cut with soda- any kinds, from ginger ale to Coke to whatever.'"

    This aligns with my beliefs as well – people put spirits into sodas, and eventually someone put squirt with tequila and figured it was delicious. Though I never trust any definitive history of a spirit-and-soda highball, I'd still love to find the first reference to this drink. 

    A Squirt advertisement from 1963, visible here (the carousel ad), mentions tequila by name (along with other base spirits) with Squirt. 

    Wondrich responded to this post on Twitter with an ad from 1973, in which Squirt advises you to try it mixed with your favorite drink: gin, vodka, whiskey, rum, or tequila. They don't call out the Paloma by name, but neither do they for any of the others. 

     

    Wondrich further tweeted that the first reference he's found by name doesn't come all the way until 2001: 

     

     

    And then mid-tweeting, he found an earlier book reference from 2000:  

     

    So then our goal as researchers is to now find the first reference to the Paloma in a book, ideally before Wondrich's Killer Cocktails from 2005 Cowboy Cocktails in 2000. 

    Below is what I've found (or rather, not found):

     

    Searching for the Paloma in Vintage Cocktail Books

    Jeremy Foyd says, "I’ve got the 1947 Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide and the Paloma is not in that one. The only tequila drink is the El Diablo."

    He follows, "I have 4 Floridita books from 1939. I didn’t see any Palomas in them. However, there is a Tequila Cocktail in each one that is basically a Tequila sour. The Tequila Cocktail was the only drink with tequila in it in each book." 

    I asked Marcovaldo Dionysos, who owns a ton of cocktail books from this era, about the drink. I thought it might turn up in the old Esquire cocktail books, which are a great source of first references to many drinks. He wrote, "

    No luck on the Esquire books. 1949 & 1956 have no Paloma. I found a Paloma in a book published in Madrid in 1957 (El Bar en el Mundo), but it’s a different drink (gin, orange juice, Cointreau). No mention in the Trader Vic books, even in his Book of Mexican Cooking (1973).

    I think of the Paloma as a Mexican drink with just tequila and Squirt, with maybe a squeeze of lime and a sprinkle of salt, though it has gotten the craft bar treatment in the last 10-15 years or so. I’m not sure when it would have been first mentioned as a proper drink.

     

    So, do you, dear reader, have any cocktail books written between say 1940 and 2005 that you can check for me? I don't know where we'll find the Paloma, but we can certainly eliminate some books. For example:

    • 1937: The Cafe Royal Cocktail Book lists both tequila and grapefruit in the book, but not in the same recipe. 
    • 1948: I have the Mud Puddle Books printing of David Embury's The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (I'm not sure if this is the 1948, 1952, or 1958 edition or a combination of all three). It is not in this book, despite it mentioning a Tequila Collins, Tequila Fizz, and Tequila Sour. 

    Let me know if you find anything!

     Here's another one that came in over Twitter:

     

     

    Update! David Wondrich found a 1950 Squirt ad, not the Paloma by name but the drink:

  • Happy 60th Birthday, Golden Cadillac Cocktail

    Poor Red's BBQ in the California gold country is famous for the Golden Cadillac, a cocktail created in 1952. Next year will be the drink's 60th birthday.

    It's a combination of Galliano, creme de cacao, and cream, thrown into a blender.

    Poor Red's sells them by the thousands. 

    Golden_Cadillac_1s
    (They don't look this fancy at Poor Red's. Image courtesy of Galliano.)

    As you might imagine, it's not the most… nuanced drink in the world but should you find yourself in El Dorado (located between Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe) it's one of those when-in-Rome cocktails. 

    Here's some history of the drink. 

    Poor Reds

    In El Dorado, California exists a bar known as Poor Red’s. Originally constructed as a weigh station for Wells Fargo, it previously operated under the name Kelly’s Bar from 1927 until 1945. Poor Red won the bar in a game of dice, and he and his wife and bookkeeper Rich Opal took it over then.

    The murals currently on the walls of Poor Red’s were installed in the 40s. They are all former employees and patrons, including the dog which used to sit out front. It is rumored his dog ran for office, but he lost.

    People come from all over California to enjoy 2 things at Poor Red’s: great barbeque and their famous Golden Cadillac cocktails.

    The Golden Cadillac

    Sometime in 1951 or 52, a woman and her new fiancé came into Poor Red’s. To celebrate their engagement they decided their very own cocktail should be created in their honor. The couple and long-time bartender Frank Klein decided it should be created to match their newly purchased golden Cadillac. Several recipes were tried, butt he final concoction is still known worldwide as the Golden Cadillac: a cocktail whose success has been credited to the unmatched quality of Bols Crème de Cacao, the clean mountain water that makes up the ice, decades old metal blenders, the perfect measure of half and half, and of course – the unique flavors and golden color of Galliano L’Autentico.

    Since this was written the bar has narrowed its creation date to 1952.

    Galliano recently gave Poor Red's a Golden Cadillac to display indefinitely outside the bar. 

    Golden cadillac car small
    And if you're not in the area any time soon, here is the recipe. 

    Golden Cadillac
    by Frank Klein of Poor Red's BBQ 

    1 oz Galliano L’Autentico
    1 oz Bols White Crème de Cacao liqueur
    1 oz cream
    Dark chocolate shavings

    Shake the ingredients and double strain through a sieve into a small wine glass. Place on a white tray and grate with dark chocolate.

     

  • Sugarcane and the Environment

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    For the most part rum is made from molasses, the byproduct of sugar production. So when we study the issue of the environmental impact of sugarcane production we need to keep in mind that molasses is the waste product of sugar production. Rum is recycling!

    That said, we're studying not just sugar but sugarcane production so let's look at its impact. Most of this information comes from Sugar: A Bittersweet History by Elizabeth Abbott (2008). See the references page for more information.

    In Cuba where they couldn’t purchase pesticides and fertilizers due to economic issues, they made their own version of organic sugar farming. 

    Sugar beets are a rotational crop so they don’t need much fertilizer or pesticide. It doesn’t cause much erosion or contamination. 

    The sugar industry ruined the Everglades. It was protected by President Harry Truman, but sugar planters drained it and plantations' phosphorous runoff hurt much of the topsoil. 

    Abbott writes about sugar's impact: “The World Wildlife Fun reports, cane has likely ‘caused a greater loss of biodiversity on the planet than any other single crop, due to its destruction of habitat to make way for plantations, its intensive use of water for irrigation, its heavy use of agricultural chemicals, and the polluted waste-water than is routinely discharged in the sugar production process.’”

     On the other hand, “Although Brazilian cane production is notoriously destructive to the environment, cane-derived fuel is precisely the opposite. It is much cleaner than fossil fuels and contains no contaminants such as sulfur dioxide. It emits much less carbon dioxide and protects the climate by vastly reducing carbon emissions, hence reducing pollution. It is sustainable. It yield 8.3 ties as much energy as as that expended to make it and, as new cane varieties are developed, will yield even more. Even its by-products are valuable, and Brazilian mills process them into electricity for their own use and to sell to the national grid…. Cane-based ethanol is the Twenty-First Century’s miracle-in-waiting.”

     

    The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

  • The Sugar Spirit Project: Enter the Sugar Beet

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    In studying sugar and sugarcane (go here for the project index) we need to study the sugar beet; sugarcane's competitor. 

    Here we'll look at the sugar beet's early history. 

    Sugar beets were not economically important as a source of sucrose until the mid-1800s. 

    In 1774 a German scientist discovered the sugar from beets was the same as from cane. 

    Napoleon, due to the economic and real war with England, bet big on sugar beets. In 1811 he supported vast increase in sugar beet production. Within 2 years they built 334 factories and produced 35,000 tons of sugar.

    To process sugar beets, they are sliced, dried, drenched with alcohol (I know the feeling some nights),  heated to boiling, and filtered. Then crystals formed after several weeks. But this technology was later refined.  

    By the end of 1800s sugar beets were planted in North America. Sugar beets best regions to grow in the US are part of California extending east to Michigan, and in Canada from British Columbia to Ontario. 

    The Mormons tried to grow sugar beets as part of their independence movement, but they failed to produce any crystallized sugar with it.  There were many other successes and failures trying to grow sugar beet in US.

    By 1902 41 factories produced over 2 million tons of sugar from beets. by 1915, there 79 factories in operation, partly due to high war prices. 

    The first American farm workers’ union strike was over sugar beets in 1903 at the American Beet Company in Oxnard, California. It employed 1000 Mexicans and Japanese, who went on strike basically against the white workers who formed organizations to keep the wages of the others low. 

    During the Great Depression, sugar beet harvesting provided lots of jobs. 

    After Pearl Harbor, thousands of Japanese and Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps: actually sugar beet farms in Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Alberta, and Manitoba, to work the fields. 

     

    Later we'll look at sugar beet production in recent times. 

     

    The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

  • Sugar in Early American History

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    In studying sugarcane and sugar, we've looked at its biology, origins, spread to the West, association with forced labor, how it was processed in the olden days, and how the English developed a taste for it. (Go here for the project index.)

    Now we'll look at sugar in America. Again I have used these resources for my facts and understanding of history, as I'm certainly no expert and I welcome your comments.

    Jamestown, Virginia was founded in 1607. Sugarcane was brought there by 1619, but the colonists couldn't make it grow. 

    As it was a new country, the United States started their sugar production late in the game versus the forces of England, France, and Portugal. However they had their own sugar islands in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Hawaii, and The Philippines. 

    Around the time of the US Civil War, we got half our sugar from Cuba and half from Louisianna. After the American Civil War (that ended slavery), Cuban slave owners wanted to end slavery but wanted to be compensated from Spain for each slave freed. Spain refused, and this lead to the Ten Years War. This didn’t end up freeing Cuba (that was 1898) from Spain but it did end slavery in Cuba in 1886. 

    After this, the US imported 82 percent of all Cuban sugar, so sugar interests in Cuba became controlled by American interests. Eventually 2/3 of Cuban sugar was controlled by American interests. 

    In the US, it was sugar producers fleeing the Haitian revolution who made Louisiana’s sugar plantations profitable.  

    In Hawaii as land leases were granted to grow sugarcane,  native Hawaiians were displaced.  Irrigation for sugarcane cultivation diverted streams from their land, so many younger Hawaiians immigrated to California. 

    The US marines, acting for the sugar interests, deposed Queen Lili’uokalani. Hawaii was annexed to the US mostly so that the sugar planters could have free access to the US market. 

    At the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, Miss Louisiana was carved from a five-foot sugar lump. Jell-O created new fans. Fairy Floss, aka cotton candy, was also introduced.

    In the 1800s in the US, grocery stores had portable mills to grind lumps of muscovado sugar into granules.

    In 1858 the Mason Jar was invented and canning took off. Canning required white sugar, increasing the demand for it.

    The ice cream craze also increased demand for sugar through mid-1800s.

    Milton Hershey, the chocolate guy, built a factory town named for himself. Then in 1916 he duplicated it in Cuba and bought more than 100,000 acres of sugarcane and built the world’s largest refinery. 

    Now sugar is challenged by high-fructose corn syrup, which is cheaper to produce and transport. In the US (as of the writing of my source book) it takes only 1.4 minutes of work to buy a pound of sugar. 

     

    The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

  • Sugarcane and Slavery

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    Boy is this ever a topic I'd rather avoid! However there is no denying the historic link between sugarcane production.

    We were tracing the spread of sugarcane and the sugar industry from the Old World to the new. But slave labor used to harvest and process sugarcane began long before sugarcane was brought to the Caribbean.  

    Before sugarcane made its way to the Atlantic islands off the coast of Spain and Portugal, slave labor was used in Crete, Cyprus, and Morocco. Warfare and plague had diminished the local labor force so slaves were 'needed' to harvest it.

    Slavery and sugar remained tied for a very long time, most notably so in the New World. 11 million African slaves were exported from their homelands. Six million of them went to work making sugar- the most of any profession. When the Haitian Revolution occurred near 1800, ending slavery there, it cut off 43 percent of Europe’s sugar supply.

    One cool note: female slaves were often the distillers of rum in the islands. 

    Abolition

    Gillray_Anti-Saccharites-or-John-Bull-and-his-Family-leaving-off-the-use-of-Sugar
    (Anti-Saccharites parody cartoon.)

    The abolition movement in England linked sugar to slavery, and encouraged people to boycott sugar. The movement was largely lead by women, who purchased the sugar for the home. They were known as anti-saccharites. 

    1807 the British House of Commons made the slave trade- but not slavery- illegal.  It wasn't until the 1830s before it was by British law. 

    The Emancipation Proclamation that finally freed the American slaves took effect in 1865.

    After the abolition of slavery in Cuba in 1884, all Caribbean sugar was made by non-forced labor.

    Sugar After Slavery

    After slavery ended, new labor was needed to harvest sugar cane, as many former slaves weren't about to take it up again.

    Laborers came from many places, but especially from China and India. They worked as  indentured servants, paying off their ride to the new island for several years. Indentured workers were called coolies.

    This and other policies kept former slaves from buying land and becoming economically equal to whites.  

    After 1869, Trinidad granted small parcels of land to people who completed their indenturship. They bought up 23,000 acres between 1885 and 1895.

    On Mauritius, nearly half a million Indian workers imported between 1834 and 1910. At one point they produced 9.4 percent of the worlds sugar supply, mostly providing it to Britain.

    Though it was far from smooth sailing, eventually things worked out. According to Sugar: A Bittersweet History by Elizabeth Abbott:

     “Mauritius is an anomaly in the colonized sugar world. Its minorities, Creole and white, have accepted its Indianness- at 68 percent of the population, it has the largest concentration of Indian outside India- and a succession of Indo-Mauritian leaders have governed. An elite minority speaks English, the country’s official language, while everyone else speaks French-derived Creole. Hindu and Muslim holidays are observed, and since 1877, the Mauitian currency has been its rupee. Mauritius’s unique circumstances and the dynamics of its society have enabled its people to unite in racial harmony. Ironically, they have embraced sugar as their common denominator.” 

    In Hawaii, the indentured laborers were Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Filipino. Chinese workers were later banned from immigrating because the powers that be felt there were too many who stuck around after their indenture time expired. 

    What fascinates me about the post-slavery indentured servant era of sugar production is the racial and cultural makeup of Caribbean islands that results from it. There are interesting mixes of whites, blacks, and Asian/Indian populations that vary depending on the island. The cross-cultural pollination over many years has lead to some fascinating local customs, celebrations, and cuisines that we think of as unique local island traditions when we visit on vacation. You go to Martinique and it's all very French and people drink champagne on the beach. You go to Trinidad and eat roti and other Indian food for every meal. As it turns out, those traditions developed due to the unique mix of people from diverse parts of the world, united under a shared history of sugarcane.  

     

    The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

     

  • The Spread of Sugarcane in the New World

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    When we last left off looking at sugarcane's spread from India/Indonesia to the rest of the world, the sugar industry had shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic islands of Spain and Portugal, including Madeira and the Canary islands. 

    During this time, the powers in Europe were developing a taste for sugar. 

    Sugar was only known in Europe after the 8th century. This is about the time that references to growing cane in the Mediterranean appear. Molasses reached England by late 1200s, coming from Sicily. 

    King Henry III (in the 13th century) ordered three pounds of sugar “if so much is to be had,” as it was rare luxury item.

    But by 1319 one Venetian trader carried 100,000 pounds of it to London. The sweet tooth for sugar developed fast. 

    Starting in 1470, European countries radically changed how sugar was produced. They imported crude sugar and refined it locally. This changed the power dynamic – refineries had power and profits – and plays into how the sugar colonies in the New World were treated.

    Sugar's Voyage to the New World

    Columbus carried sugarcane from the Canary islands to New World on his second voyage to Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) in 1493. However they were more concerned with finding gold than farming, so the sugarcane failed.

    Later they brought in experts from the Canary Islands to help get it established. It was first grown in the new world in Santo Domingo (though it failed a few times first) and was first shipped back to Europe in 1516.

    Portugal soon got into the sugarcane farming business as well. Brazil was shipping sugar to Lisbon Portugal by 1526 in large quantities. The Portuguese ruled the 1500s in terms of sugarcane dominance.  

    In early 1500s, Spain conquered the Mexican mainland, and used the Caribbean islands more as protected harbors along shipping routes than as sugar growing islands. From 1580 to 1650 (when the English and French got into the game on smaller islands) the Caribbean didn’t produce all that much sugar for export. 

    In 1625 Brazil was still supplying nearly all of Europe with sugar, but when English colonies got into full swing they drove Portugal out of the Northern European trade areas.

    Until the mid-1600s, the British navy drink was "beer sometimes supplanted by brandy." Then the British started making rum. Barbados was settled in 1627 and sugar was grown there. Then after the 1655 British conquest of Jamaica, they started replacing the  brandy ration with Jamaican rum. (Rum is distilled from molasses, the byproduct of sugar production.)

    In 1731 rum became part of the official ration all the way up until Black Tot Day in 1970. Navy rum didn't just provide tasty nutrients, it killed bacteria in the drinking water. 

    Though the Portuguese, Spanish, and British were growing sugarcane, French prices were the best in Europe. Unable to compete, England just supplied its own needs from its islands, keeping pace with increasing demands. 

    As we touched on before sugarcane was even grown in the New World, England  eventually forbade colonies from refining their own sugar. This kept the sugar colonies“infantilized and dependent.” Europe kept all the control, kept wealthy landowners in power in the colonies. The sugar colonies were to be used, not respected. 

    In the early 1600s, the British, Dutch and French all established Caribbean plantations. Years later in the 1800s, Cuba and Brazil were the major producers. Between these eras, sugar production increased as people got a taste for it. The technology to grow and refine sugar didn't change much in this era, but consumer demand did. 

    In the next post we'll look at sugar production and the labor used to do the work. 

    *Bonus fun fact* The West India Docks in Jamaica had gang members with the best names: The River Pirates, Night Plunderers, Heavy Horsemen, Scuffle-Hunters, and Mud Larks.

     

    The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

     

  • The Spread of Sugarcane in the Old World

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    In the last post we looked at what sugarcane is. Now we'll see where it came from and how it traveled around the world.

     

    Sugarcane is a tall grass native to the region of the India and Southeast Asia. It was first domesticated in New Guinea, perhaps independently in Indonesia.

     

    In 325 BC Alexander the Great’s general Nearchus said, “A reed in India brings forth honey without the help of bees, from which an intoxicating drink is made though the plant bears no fruit.”

     

    Around the same time, sugar was referred to as khanda, from which we probably derive the word candy.

     

    In China there are references to sugar in 286 BC. Sugar spread with Buddhism and the Buddha was even referred to as the “King of Sugarcane.”

     

    Sugar loaves were probably first produced in India 2000 years ago. Sugar loaves are hardened in ceramic molds or cones from which the more liquid molasses was drained, leaving behind the dark-brown, crystalline loaf.

     

    Dioscorides (circa 40—90 AD) wrote, “There is a kind of concentrated honey, called saccharon, found in reeds in India and Arabia Felix, like in consistence to salt, and brittle to be broken between the teeth, as salt is. It is good for the belly and the stomach being dissolved in water and so drank, helping the pained bladder and the reins.” This shows he was familiar with the crystalline form of sugar. 

     

    Sugar making in Egypt probably came before Arab conquest. The Arabs were experts at irrigation and used their skills to grow sugarcane and spread it to new places. Arabs spread it to the Mediterranean, Sicily, Cyprus, Malta, Morocco, and Spain. 

     

    During the First Crusade (1096-99) Christians discovered Arab cane farms. Soon they were growing and transferring sugar cane to new locations.  

     

    From the Canary Islands it traveled to the New World. We'll pick up sugar's spread to the West in the next post. 

     

     

    The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

     

  • Sugar Spirit: What is Sugarcane?

    SugarSpiritLogoSquare1 In the Sugar Spirit project, we're going to look at sugar's history and production, but first we should establish what sugar and sugarcane are. 

    Sugar and Sucrose

    When we talk about sugar, we mean table sugar, or sucrose. 

    To chemists, sugar refers to a class of 'edible crystalline carbohydrates' that also includes fructose and lactose. But most of us aren't chemists so we won't use the word 'sucrose' so much as just 'sugar.'

    Except for now: Sucrose occurs in all green plants. It is a plant food manufactured photosynthetically from carbon dioxide and water.

    For table sugar, the plants harvested to make it are sugarcane and sugar beets. We'll get to sugar beets later.

    Zacapa sugar cane field harvest demo
    (Sugarcane harvest demo in Guatemala.)

    Sugarcane

    Sugarcane is a large grass of the family Gramineae. There are six known species. 

    The most widely grown is saccharum officinarum, which depending on your source is called “noble cane” or “sugar of the apothecaries.” Its stalks that grow as thick as two inches, and 12-15 feet high.

    Sugarcane is a subtropical and tropical crop requiring large amount of water and labor. In farming, it is propagated asexually from cuttings of the stem. It becomes ripe in the dry season after anywhere from 6 to 18 months depending on the climate. 

    In the next post, we'll begin to look at the spread of sugarcane from the Indian Subcontinent to the rest of the world. 

     

    The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

     

  • The History and Production of Angostura Bitters

    In March I visited the Angostura distillery in Port of Spain, Trinidad. They make not only Angostura Bitters here but also the line of Angostura rums and rums for several other brands. In this post, I'll focus on the bitters. 

    Bartender group Angostura3_tn

    The History of Angostura Bitters

    Angostura Bitters were created in 1824 by Dr. Johann Siegert. They were originally called "Dr. Siegert's Aromatic Bitters" and later renamed Angostura Bitters. (The folks from The Bitter Truth Bitters have some interesting information about a lawsuit over the name "Angostura" between these bitters and Abbott's Bitters.) 

    Old bitters bottle Angostura Distillery Museum_tn
    (One of the other Angostura Bitters bottles from around the world on display at the museum.)

    The bitters were created for tropical stomach ailments in Venezuela, as Dr. Siegert was the Surgeon General of Simon Bolivar's army.  In fact the town of Angostura is now called Ciudad Bolivar. The bitters were first exported to England in 1830.

    Simon Bolivar Angostura Distillery Museum_tn
    (Simon Bolivar)

    According to this good history on Angostura's website, Siegert's son exhibited the bitters in England in 1862 where they were mixed with gin. Thus the Pink Gin was born.  

    Ango pink rum3 Angostura Distillery Museum_tn
    (Angostura used to produce Pink Rum – rum laced with Angostura Bitters.)

    After Dr. Siegert died in 1870, his sons relocated the business from the politically unstable Venezuela to Trinidad in 1875. The company was renamed Angostura Bitters in 1904. Sometime shortly after this,  the son in charge of Angostura lost all of his money in bad business deals and Angostura was taken by his creditors.

    Why is the Angostura Bitters Label Too Big for the Bottle?

    For a competition of some sort, one brother designed the bottle and another brother designed the label. By the time they figured out they should have consulted each other on the size of each, it was too late to change. On the advice of a judge in the contest, they kept it as their signature. Here, our tour guide does a better job of explaining it in this 1-minute video.

     

    How Are Angostura Bitters Produced? 

    The secret ingredients for the bitters are shipped from wherever they come from to England. There the ingredients are put into coded bags and shipped to Trinidad. I believe they said they have a long-standing arrangement with customs that the bags are not inspected when they arrive in Trinidad to maintain their secret.  

    At the distillery, there are five people known as "manufacturers" who prepare the ingredients. They weigh out the relative quantities of each in a room known as the Sanctuary. The ingredients are then dropped into a crusher that crushes them all together as they fall into the room below – the Bitters Room. 

    At the base of the crusher are carts that hold the ingredients. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the room due to the high-proof alcohol vapors (but later did of the bartenders there), but we did get to peak into the crushed herbs. I remember seeing largish chunks of something that looked like gum arabic, and a lot of rice-sized grey grains about the size of lavender seeds, though I doubt they were because there was a lot of them. (There you go: gum arabic and lavender- make your own Angostura at home 🙂 )

    The crushed herbs then go into a "percolator" tank with 97% alcohol to extract their flavor.  After this infusion is done, the liquid is then transferred to another tank where brown sugar and caramel color are added. Then the liquid is transferred again and distilled water is added to bring them down to the 44.7% alcohol level for bottling. 

    This is all done in a relatively small room with a bunch of tanks in it. It's impressive that the world's supply of Angostura Bitters is made here. 

    Bartender group Angostura5_tn

    Later that day, they did publicity shots with the bartenders in the Bitters Room. They let the professional photographers take photos and let me take them without flash. As you can see the bitters tanks have the bottle labels on them. Except in this case, they actually fit.