Most of the world’s best bars are located in buzzing metropolitan cities: Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, New York and other places that attract business and busyness. Martinis, Manhattans and Old Fashioneds are served to the backdrop of towering skyscrapers and the constant hum of traffic. This is where spirits are consumed. However, it is far from where they are made.
In our minds, spirits are often associated with the imagery of a science lab – Jules Verne-style operations with copper pipes, bubbling vats and hissing pot stills, with high-strength spirit in the hands of folks in white coats. Wine, on the other hand, evokes rolling verdant vineyards bathed in sunlight, the flat-capped vigneron plucking grapes from the vine with soil-stained hands.
Yet it is in the golden sweep of fields where barley sways in a gentle breeze, or amid the rugged terrains where agave grows proudly under the relentless sun, that the story of distillation is first forged. As I visit distillers around the world, I find myself in fields and forests exploring techniques that have been handed down through generations, where crofters have slowly evolved into distillers.
Distillation is a continuation of the harvest, a preservation of bounty, a dance between soil and spirit
Spirits such as whisky, mezcal and Armagnac are agricultural pursuits, first made in the fields of the Scottish Highlands, the terrains of Oaxaca, and on the slopes of French vineyards. Distillation is a continuation of the harvest, a preservation of bounty, a dance between soil and spirit. Distilled drinks are built on the very concept that the relationship between humans and the land is one of necessity. Harvests are fickle, yielding bounty one year and scarcity the next – a concept that wine has cleverly turned into ‘vintages’. The science of fermentation and distillation for preservation became an essential act long before it was lauded as a commercial one.
The realisation that grain, fruit and plants alike could be converted into the water of life – eau de vie, aqua vitae, aguardiente – through distillation, capturing the sunlit days of harvest and the vigour of crops in a more enduring form, has given us so much more than preservation. It has given us an industry built on history, heritage, technique and, most importantly, flavour.
Mezcal, born of the agave plant, is a spirit so deeply tied to the land that it tastes of the very earth from which it springs. Agave grows slow – upwards of seven, 12 and even 25 years before it is ready for harvest. When the time comes, it is unearthed with reverence, and its heart, the piña, roasted over smouldering wood in earthen pits, the smoke of the fire imparting an earthy note to the agave’s sweet flesh. In this process, as ancient as the land itself, the farmer and distiller are one, preserving the spirit of the agave long after its roots have left the soil.
For me, though, this agricultural narrative finds its most poetic expression in the Gascony region of France and in the world of Armagnac. Here, the grape is sovereign, with vineyards sprawling in orderly rows over gently rolling hills. These vines have been cultivated for centuries, and they are part of a complex ecosystem of arable and pastoral farming, each small element contributing to the overall economy of the region. Very few people here are full-time distillers, but they stop whatever job they have each season to ensure the harvest is picked, the wine is made, the stills are lit and kept alight, and the barrels are filled.
Grapes here are the offspring of the earth, nurtured by rain-laden skies and long summer days. When the crop is harvested, it is not merely stored but transformed – first into wine, and then into spirit. The essence of the grapes is concentrated through the elemental marriage of fire and copper. The distiller, in this act, is both farmer and craftsman, preserving his yield in a form that time cannot corrupt.
Just as the whisky-maker is inseparable from the barleycorn, the Armagnac producer is bound to the vine, their craft dependent on the rhythms of the season. And of all spirits, Armagnac is the most susceptible to these seasons. Distilled to a lower alcoholic strength than most other spirits – mid-50s ABV – it retains a distinct flavour of grape and the vintage quality of the vines.
This is why distillation’s roots as an agricultural pursuit are so important. A spirit is born not merely of ingredients but also of place. Its flavour is the voice of its homeland, which speaks of rain and wind, of sun and soil, with the distiller as its translator. Distillation is, and always has been, the quiet continuation of agriculture. It is the farmer’s art refined, the field’s voice distilled.
