These facts about alcohol will interest you, some will even make you laugh or surprise. How little we know about the products we are used to using.
– The American Prohibition Law prohibited the production, transportation and sale of alcohol. However, it did not apply to drinking alcohol behind the closed doors of your own home. Enterprising winemakers began to make wine concentrate in briquettes that could be diluted with water, insisted and consumed.
– During Prohibition, clandestine alcohol dealers tied special shoes similar to cow hooves to the soles of shoes to confuse the police officers who sat on their tails. It was simply impossible to find traces of the smugglers.
– Another story from the times of Prohibition. When transporting alcoholic cargo across the sea, in front of customs, smugglers tied a bag of salt or sugar to each box of booze and threw them into the water. After a while, the contents of the bags dissolved in water, and the loads floated up.
– The ancient Persians decided the most important matters while drinking wine. The decisions made under the influence of alcohol were approved the next day by all those present sober. Or, on the contrary, the decisions made then had to be “polished” with a lot of wine.
– The Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras invented an original mug for drinking wine. It represented a system of communicating vessels into which you can pour wine up to a certain point, after which it will start pouring. Pythagoras believed that in this way it was possible to learn the sense of proportion and the culture of wine consumption.
– Spirits are aged in oak barrels to oxygenate them. After aging for many years, some of the alcohol evaporates, and winemakers poetically call it “the angel’s share”.
– The Jim Beam company – one of the largest and most famous producers of bourbon – invented a technology for extracting alcohol that has soaked into the walls of oak barrels. The recovered alcohol was called the “devil’s share” by analogy with angelic vapors.
– Peter I was the most famous fighter for sobriety. He invented many decrees regarding alcohol, and demanded their strict implementation. For notorious drunkards, the sovereign ordered to cast 7-kilogram orders “For drunkenness” from cast iron, which were attached to the violators with chains on the chest for a whole week.
– The Aztecs also prepared pulque – the juice of fermented agave – one of the most ancient alcoholic drinks in the world. It was not available to everyone, only priests had the right to drink it during the performance of rituals and leaders during the celebration of military victories.
– On Tatiana’s day, all students are drunkenly celebrating the holiday. In the 19th century, the doormen of the Strelna and Yar restaurants wrote the address of students in chalk on their backs so that cabbies could take revelers home.
– In the Italian commune of Marino, the province of Rome, the famous grape festival takes place every year, and in all local fountains, instead of water, wine flows. In 2008, a breakdown occurred, and the wine entered the central water supply.
– The most expensive bottle of vodka costs 3,75 million dollars. Its cost is due to the complex preparation: first it is filtered through ice, then through coals obtained from Scandinavian birch wood, and at the end through a mixture of crushed diamonds and other precious stones.
– Briton Mark Dorman invented Blavod black vodka in 1996. It is black due to the catechu black dye.
– To brew and drink beer during Lent, German monks to the Pope of the messenger with a keg of drink. While the messenger was getting there, the beer turned sour. Dad did not like the drink, and he decided that there was no sin in drinking it during the fast.