Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Nutcracker in Harlem

The New York Times reports on nutcracker, a mixture of spirits with fruit juice, sold on the streets of Harlem.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/nyregion/21nutcracker.html?hp

Social History of Bourbon (book)

University Press of Kentucky is reissuing in 2010 a book by Gerald Carson (1899-1989) first published in 1984, The Social History of Bourbon.

Diageo plugs pension hole with Scotch whiskey

The drinks conglomerate Diageo has paid its pension obligations by transferring ownership of two million barrels of maturing Scotch whiskey to a pensions partnership.  For details, see here.

Micro-distilleries in Brooklyn

Brooklyn is acquiring several micro-distilleries.  See the Wall Street Journal article here.

Whiskey's history (book)

Kevin R. Koster, Whiskey: A Global History (Reaktion Books, forthcoming 2010). Popular account.

Pakistani bootleggers at risk from police, the Taliban, and their own families

Pakistani bootleggers earn high profits at great risk: from the police, from the Taliban (who formerly tolerated whiskey drinking), and from their own families who might disown them.  The contraband whiskey, beer, and other alcoholic drinks comes largely from foreign embassies.  By the way, vodka has less prestige.  For more, see here.

India's capital shifting from whiskey to beer and vodka

Long known as a whiskey-drinking city, Delhi has shifted to beer and vodka. For more, see here.

Beer goes to war (article)

Lisa Jacobson, "Beer Goes to War: The Politics of Beer Promotion and Production in the Second World War," Food, Culture, and Society 12 (September 2009): 275-312. Her current research centers on a book, Cultures of Drink: Alcohol Promotion and Consumption in the United States after Prohibition Repeal. The University of California at Santa Barbara website describes this project, "a comparative study of vintners, brewers, and distillers [that] examines how alcohol producers, advertisers, popular media, tastemakers, and consumers forged distinctive (and sometimes antagonistic) cultures of drink in the four decades following Prohibition’s repeal in 1933."

Booze in Peoria

Local historian Norman V. Kelly provides many details about alcoholic drink in Peoria, Illinois, which once called itself "the alcohol capital of the world."  In 1913 it had eleven distilleries (such as Clarke, Woolner, Corning, Atlas and Great Western), five major breweries, and within a 20-mile radius 321 saloons and the like, most of them within the city limits. In 1917 the Lever Act closed the distilleries and breweries.  The taverns closed in 1920.  Despite rumors, there don't appear to have been any speakeasies during prohibition and only two bootlegging murders.  By 1940 there were over 200 taverns once again, most of them involved in gambling.  During the period 1941-48 (when he was killed by a shot in the back) Bernie Shelton was the best known local gangster, and his reputation is mostly myth.  For Norm Kelly's website, see here.  From other sources we learn that Peoria got its first brewery in 1837 (Andrew Eitle) and its first distillery in 1843 (Almiron S. Cole).  At one time Peoria had 22 distilleries.

Distilling in Virginia during the 1800s

At one time distilling was second only to milling among the industries of Augusta County, Virginia, and one out of four estate inventories included a still.  See Katherine Brown and Nancy Sorrells, local historians, in their presentation at the Augusta County Historical Society, "The Rise and Fall of Whiskey Distilling in Augusta and Rockbridge Counties." For more, see here.