
It’s something I’ve wondered for a while now: why are liquors called spirits? I imagined that it had something to do with a drinker’s consciousness. How it seems to leave the body before succumbing to a drunken stupor. Could that be it? Or is it because a stiff drink can often lift someone’s spirits through its own essence? Basically, adding to your own spirit by adding some that’s been externally generated and bottled. Or — as I theorized during a rum tasting exercise last night with Don Papa Rum’s Aaron Goodall via Zoom — is it because of what they essentially are: the spirit of a previous drink? As it turns out, I’m pretty close to bullseye on that last one.
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