261 Fun Facts About Alcohol

Which toxic alcohol, once known as wood alcohol, can cause blindness when it taints bootleg spirits?

Methanol is turned by the body into formic acid, which attacks the optic nerve; oddly, one antidote doctors can give is ordinary drinking alcohol.

Which French scientist showed in the 1850s that living yeast, not chemistry alone, turns sugar into alcohol?

Louis Pasteur went on to patent a way of gently heating wine to kill the microbes that spoiled it; pasteurisation was only later extended to milk.

A regular beer such as a standard lager is roughly what strength in alcohol by volume?

5% is the usual benchmark, which is why US health guidance counts a 12-ounce beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine and a 1.5-ounce shot of spirits as the same single drink.

Which simple cocktail is nothing more than vodka topped up with orange juice?

The Screwdriver's name first turned up among Americans in wartime Turkey; the popular but unproven story is that, lacking a spoon, they stirred the drink with a screwdriver.

What US term equals twice the percentage of alcohol by volume in a distilled spirit?

Proof doubles the percentage, so an 80-proof spirit is 40% ABV. The word goes back to tests that 'proved' a spirit's strength for the taxman, such as checking whether gunpowder soaked in it would still burn.

Which fermentation by-products, other than alcohol itself, give drinks much of their flavour and are blamed for worse hangovers?

Congeners are why colour is a rough guide to the morning after: bourbon, brandy and red wine carry far more of them than vodka, and studies suggest the extra load makes hangovers worse.

Which liver enzyme carries out the first step in clearing a drink from the body, producing acetaldehyde?

Alcohol dehydrogenase works at a steady pace, clearing roughly one standard drink an hour, and nothing a drinker does afterwards can speed it up.

Which bar technique crushes herbs or fruit against the bottom of the glass before the liquid goes in?

Muddling is done with a muddler, a blunt pestle that mashes the ingredients to release their flavour; the mint julep and its relatives, the 'smashes', are built this way.

Which of these is a key ingredient in a classic Manhattan cocktail?

A Manhattan is whiskey (traditionally rye), sweet vermouth and Angostura bitters, stirred and garnished with a cherry; gin, white rum and tequila have no place in it.

What refreshing cocktail typically combines white rum, lime juice, fresh mint, sugar, and soda water?

Mojito is a Cuban diminutive of mojo, a sauce or marinade, from the Spanish mojar, 'to make wet'; the drink was born in Havana, though exactly how is still debated.

Which cocktail traditionally features tequila, lime juice, and an orange-flavored liqueur?

Margarita is Spanish for 'daisy', and one leading theory makes it a tequila version of the Daisy, an older cocktail of spirit, citrus and orange liqueur; rival tales credit women named Margarita.

Which New Orleans cocktail combines rye or cognac, Peychaud's Bitters, sugar and an absinthe rinse?

The Sazerac is named after the French brandy it was first made with; when vine blight choked off supplies around 1870, New Orleans bartenders switched to American whiskey.

Which American motorsport grew out of drivers outrunning the law with carloads of illegal moonshine?

NASCAR's roots lie in Prohibition, when Appalachian bootleggers tuned ordinary-looking cars to outrun the police; Bill France set up its forerunner in 1947 with seed money from the moonshiner Raymond Parks.

Port, Sherry and Madeira all belong to which category of wine?

Fortified wines get a dose of spirit, originally to stop them spoiling on long sea voyages; added part-way through fermentation, it kills the yeast and leaves Port naturally sweet.

Which type of beer uses top-fermenting yeast at warmer temperatures, giving fruity flavors?

Ale yeast works warm and rises to the top of the vat; lager yeast ferments cold and sinks, which is why lager brewers needed caves and ice-packed cellars before refrigeration.

What is the base ingredient for rum?

Sugarcane gives rum by way of a leftover: by the traditional account, enslaved plantation workers in the 17th-century Caribbean found that molasses, the residue of sugar refining, would ferment.

Sake, brewed from polished rice with koji mould, is the traditional drink of which country?

Japan's sake is brewed more like beer than wine: koji mould turns the rice starch to sugar before yeast ferments it, though 'rice wine' is the nickname.

Which white grape joins the dark-skinned Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier as Champagne's three main varieties?

Chardonnay is the only white grape of the three; a Champagne made from it alone is a blanc de blancs, while the two Pinots are pressed so gently that their dark skins barely tint the juice.

Gin takes both its name and its defining flavour from which berry?

Juniper reached English as 'gin' through the Dutch jenever; the spirit took off after 1688, when William of Orange's governments curbed French brandy imports and encouraged home distilling.

What sinks through the orange juice to colour a Tequila Sunrise?

Grenadine gives the drink its dawn glow; it took off in 1972, when a Sausalito bartender served it to the Rolling Stones and the band went on ordering it all across America on that year's tour.

Which vodka cocktail becomes a Caesar, often called Canada's national cocktail, when clam broth is added?

The Bloody Mary's tomato juice met clam broth in Calgary in 1969, when Walter Chell needed a signature drink for an Italian restaurant and borrowed the idea from spaghetti alle vongole.

What is the wine steward of a fine restaurant called?

Sommelier began as the Old French word for a pack-animal driver: the court officer in charge of baggage and provisions ended up in charge of the wine.

The earliest evidence of winemaking, from around 6000 BCE, was found in which present-day country?

Georgia's claim rests on chemistry: fragments of 8,000-year-old jars from two villages south of Tbilisi still carried tartaric acid, the chemical fingerprint of wine.

Which style of wine gets its colour from leaving red grape skins in the juice for only a few hours?

Rosé is rarely a mix of red and white: French law forbids that shortcut everywhere except Champagne, so the pink has to come from the grape skins.

Where in Scotland are the smoky, peaty whiskies Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg made?

Islay's peat is burned to dry the grain before distilling, and the smoke clings to it all the way into the glass.

What French term sums up the soil, climate and topography that shape a wine?

Terroir underpins France's appellation rules, which is why French labels put the village or vineyard ahead of the grape variety.

Which anise-flavoured Greek spirit turns milky white when water is added?

Ouzo clouds because anethole, the oil that gives anise its flavour, dissolves in strong alcohol but not in water; add water and it comes out as a milky haze, the 'louche'.

What term describes a wine produced from grapes harvested in a single, specific year?

Vintage matters most where it is rare: Champagne and port houses usually blend across years to keep a house style, and declare a vintage only after their best harvests.

Which rum cocktail did Pat O'Brien's bar in New Orleans make famous, serving it in a curvy lamp-shaped glass?

The Hurricane was a wartime fix: whiskey was scarce and distributors made bars take surplus rum with it, so Pat O'Brien poured the rum into a fruity drink named after its hurricane-lamp glass.

A drink shaken or stirred with ice, then strained into a stemmed glass, is served how?

Up drinks come in a stemmed glass for a reason: with no ice in the drink to keep it cold, the stem keeps a warm hand away from the bowl.

Which bar term means a spirit poured straight from the bottle into the glass, with nothing added?

Neat has long meant 'undiluted': the word comes, by way of 'clean' and 'pure', from the Latin nitidus, 'gleaming'.

Which Italian liqueur, whose name means 'a little bitter', is known for its almond flavour?

Amaretto's best-known brand, Disaronno, contains no almonds at all: its marzipan flavour comes from apricot kernel oil.

Which Scotch category must come from malted barley made at one distillery?

Single malt does not mean a single cask or batch: most bottlings marry many casks, and 'single' promises only that every drop came from one distillery.

Which classic cocktail shakes bourbon with lemon juice, sugar and often egg white?

A Whiskey Sour made with egg white is sometimes called a Boston Sour; the white is there for texture, whipping into a foamy head when the drink is shaken.

In Germany's Feuerzangenbowle, a flaming sugarloaf drips into which Christmas-market drink?

Mulled wine catches the caramelised sugar as it melts; a 1944 film comedy named after the punch is now a student cult classic, screened each Christmas season in packed German lecture halls.

Which Italian region is the home of Chianti, the red wine once sold in straw-wrapped flasks?

Tuscany's Chianti rules once forced growers to blend in white grapes; rebels who refused had to label their reds as humble table wine, and those pricey 'Super Tuscans' got the rules relaxed.

What is the primary grain used in the production of Bourbon whiskey?

Corn must make up at least 51% of a bourbon's grain; because the law also demands new charred oak, each barrel is used once and then sold on, mostly to distillers abroad, from Scotland to the Caribbean.

The red grape that Australians call Shiraz goes by which name in its French homeland, the Rhône Valley?

Syrah was long said to have come from the Persian city of Shiraz, but DNA typing in 1998 showed it is a native of south-eastern France, the offspring of two obscure local grapes.

Which brunch cocktail mixes Champagne with orange juice?

A Mimosa is named after the yellow mimosa blossom; London's Buck's Fizz, said to date from 1921, is the same idea, by some accounts with twice as much Champagne as juice.

What type of alcoholic beverage is typically enjoyed before a meal to stimulate the appetite?

Aperitif comes from the Latin aperire, 'to open', because the drink is meant to open the appetite; its opposite number, the digestif, closes the meal.

Which part of a pot-still run, between the first and last cuts, is kept as the spirit?

Hearts, the middle cut, go into the cask; the foreshots that run first carry the most volatile compounds and the feints that run last are oily and weak, so both are set aside or redistilled.

Which cocktail of gin and dry vermouth, garnished with an olive or lemon twist, becomes a Gibson with an onion?

The Martini has been shedding vermouth for a century: around 1922 the usual ratio was two parts gin to one, by the 1940s it was four to one, and it kept falling.

Which spirit is mixed with crushed lime and sugar to make Brazil's Caipirinha?

Cachaça is Brazil's own spirit; by one account the Caipirinha began in 1918 as a Spanish-flu remedy made with lemon, garlic and honey, until someone left out the garlic and honey.

Which bright red Italian bitter liqueur makes up a third of a classic Negroni?

Campari was already in the Americano; by the most-told story, Count Camillo Negroni asked a Florence bartender around 1919 to swap its soda water for gin, and the Negroni was born.

Which of these whiskeys is customarily triple-distilled for extra smoothness?

Irish whiskey is triple-distilled by custom, not by law; it also lacks the smoke common in Scotch, because Irish maltsters rarely dry their barley over peat.

Which French wine region, home of Romanée-Conti, is the classic heartland of Pinot Noir?

Burgundy's vineyards are split into slivers because Napoleonic inheritance law divided them among all heirs: the 50-hectare Clos de Vougeot had more than 80 owners by the 2000s.

Which wine bottle size holds 1.5 litres, exactly twice the standard bottle?

Magnum is Latin for 'great'; collectors prize the size because wine in large bottles seems to age more slowly than in standard ones.

Which of these liqueurs is coffee-flavored, as used in the Black Russian?

Kahlúa and vodka became the Black Russian in 1949, when Brussels barman Gustave Tops mixed it in honour of Perle Mesta, the American ambassador to Luxembourg.

Which constitutional amendment introduced nationwide Prohibition in the United States?

The Eighteenth Amendment never banned drinking itself: it outlawed making, selling and transporting liquor, so anything already in the cellar could legally be drunk at home.

Which state with a teetotal reputation cast the deciding 36th vote to repeal Prohibition in December 1933?

Utah's convention voted unanimously for repeal on December 5, 1933, against the wishes of the Mormon church's president, and so became the 36th and deciding state.

Which organisation coordinated the US Prohibition campaign after 1900?

The Anti-Saloon League was America's first modern single-issue pressure group: it endorsed politicians who voted dry and financed the opponents of those who would not.

Which president signed the 1933 Cullen-Harrison Act, which made beer legal again?

Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it on March 22, 1933, reportedly remarking that it would be a good time for a beer; April 7, the day the taps reopened, is marked each year as National Beer Day.

Which president's veto of the Volstead Act did Congress override?

Woodrow Wilson's veto was promptly overridden by Congress in October 1919; the act then set the bar for 'intoxicating' at just 0.5% alcohol, which outlawed ordinary beer and wine as well as spirits.

Which Prohibition agent led the incorruptible Chicago squad that the press nicknamed 'the Untouchables'?

Eliot Ness's men got the name from a Chicago reporter after they turned down large bribes; Ness died in 1957, months before the memoir that made him famous was published.

Which Chicago gangster built a bootlegging empire during Prohibition and was finally jailed for tax evasion?

Al Capone opened a soup kitchen in Chicago in 1930, serving three free meals a day to thousands of the unemployed while prosecutors built the tax case against him.

What name did Americans give the hidden, illegal bars that flourished during Prohibition?

Speakeasy is older than Prohibition: a Pennsylvania newspaper was already using it for an unlicensed saloon in 1889, three decades before the country went dry.

Which 19th-century American slang term meant an unlicensed bar that got round the law on selling drink?

'Blind tiger' was a 19th-century name for an illicit bar, from the dodge of charging admission to see a 'blind tiger' and handing over a free drink; 'blind pig' was the same trick.

The 1516 Bavarian Reinheitsgebot permitted which three beer ingredients?

Water, barley and hops are all the 1516 text lists: yeast goes unnamed, though brewers knowingly reused it from batch to batch, and it joined the legal list only in later versions.

How long was the lease Arthur Guinness signed for St. James's Gate in 1759?

9,000 years at £45 a year is what Arthur Guinness signed for, but the lease no longer matters: the brewery outgrew the original four acres and bought the land outright.

Which instrument, modelled on a medieval one kept at Trinity College Dublin, has been the Guinness trademark since 1876?

The harp was Guinness's registered trademark long before independence, so when the Irish Free State adopted the same emblem in 1922 it had to turn its harp to face the other way.

Which London drinks giant was created in 1997 when Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan?

Diageo inherited Burger King and Pillsbury from Grand Metropolitan, then sold them both off within a few years to concentrate on drinks.

Guinness's creamy draught head comes from mixing the beer with carbon dioxide and which gas?

Draught Guinness is pushed with a roughly 75/25 nitrogen–carbon dioxide mix; nitrogen's tiny, poorly soluble bubbles give the tight creamy head, a system Guinness introduced in 1959.

Which Dutch beer brand began in 1864 when a 22-year-old bought Amsterdam's De Hooiberg ('The Haystack') brewery?

Heineken was the young buyer's surname: within a decade Gerard Heineken had dropped the brewery's old-style beer and switched to Bavarian-style lager, then the coming international fashion.

Which dark beer style, first brewed in 18th-century London, was the forerunner of stout?

Porter was probably named for the London porters who drank it; the strongest versions were sold as 'stout porter', and in time the second word dropped away.

Which US city, home of Miller, Pabst and Schlitz, was long known as America's brewing capital?

Milwaukee's big breweries were founded by German immigrants, and booming Chicago, ninety miles to the south, became their biggest customer; the city's baseball team is called the Brewers.

The American Budweiser sells as 'Bud' in most of Europe because a brewery in which country owns the name there?

The Czech Republic's state-owned Budweiser Budvar brews in České Budějovice, Budweis in German, the town whose beer the American brand borrowed its name from in 1876.

The Lincoln County Process used for Jack Daniel's filters whiskey through what?

Sugar maple charcoal mellows the new spirit drop by drop before it reaches the barrel; Jack Daniel learned distilling from Nathan 'Nearest' Green, an enslaved man who became his first master distiller.

Which cocktail of gin, vodka and Kina Lillet does James Bond invent and name in the novel Casino Royale?

The Vesper is named by Bond after Vesper Lynd; it can no longer be mixed exactly as he ordered it, because Kina Lillet was discontinued in 1986.

Bacardi Limited moved its headquarters to which city in 1965?

Bacardi moved its headquarters to Hamilton, Bermuda in 1965, five years after Castro's government seized its Cuban assets; the company remained family-owned.

Bacardi's 'Cathedral of Rum', the largest rum distillery in the world, is where?

Puerto Rico's Cataño plant makes about 85% of Bacardi's rum; the firm began distilling on the island in the 1930s so that it could sell in the United States free of import tariffs.

A colony of which animal in the rafters of Bacardi's first distillery inspired the rum's logo?

A bat colony roosting in the roof caught the eye of the founder's wife, Amalia, who suggested the emblem; locals were soon asking for 'the rum of the bat'.

In 1795 the King of Spain gave which family the first licence to produce tequila commercially?

Cuervo: José María Guadalupe de Cuervo won the licence in 1795, after Spain lifted a ban it had imposed to favour its own imported wines and spirits; the firm still dates itself from that year.

Moët & Chandon was established in 1743 by which Épernay wine trader?

Claude Moët, an Épernay wine trader, founded the house in 1743; his grandson Jean-Remy Moët expanded it, and the Chandon name was added in 1833 after Pierre-Gabriel Chandon married into the family.

Moët & Chandon's best-selling brand, introduced in the 1860s, is called what?

Brut Imperial, sold since 1869, is the house's best-seller; it is blended from more than 100 wines, older reserves among them, so that it tastes the same whatever the harvest.

Dom Pérignon was a monk of which religious order?

Dom Pierre Pérignon was a Benedictine monk and cellarer at the abbey of Hautvillers near Épernay from 1668 until his death in 1715; tales wrongly credit him with inventing sparkling Champagne.

Christopher Merret's 1662 paper on making wine sparkle was presented to which London body?

Royal Society fellows heard Christopher Merret's paper decades before the date tradition gives for the supposed invention of sparkling Champagne by the monk Dom Pérignon.

Which Champagne house did Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin take over in 1805, later inventing the riddling table to clear its wine?

Veuve Clicquot means 'Widow Clicquot': Barbe-Nicole took charge at 27 when her husband died, and her 1816 riddling table let the sediment be removed, so the wine could be sold crystal-clear.

Mead is made by fermenting which ingredient with water?

Honey and water ferment into mead; versions with added herbs or spices are called metheglin, from the Welsh for a medicinal drink, because many were taken as folk remedies.

In Norse mythology, the Mead of Poetry was crafted from the blood of whom?

Kvasir, the wisest of beings, was killed by the dwarfs Fjalar and Galar, who drained his blood to brew the Mead of Poetry; anyone who drank it became a poet or scholar.

Perry is the cider-like drink made by fermenting the juice of which fruit?

Pears for perry are small, hard varieties too astringent to eat; one, the Barland, was said to be so unpleasant that even pigs refused it.

What is the rough, cloudy farmhouse cider of England's West Country called?

Scrumpy's name is traced to 'scrump', a dialect word for something withered or shrivelled, as the apples used often were; to go scrumping still means to steal apples from an orchard.

Soju was traditionally made from which grain?

Soju was traditionally distilled from rice; the technique arrived with the Mongols in the 13th century, and from 1965 to 1999 a rice shortage forced makers onto sweet potato and tapioca.

Chinese baijiu is usually distilled from which fermented grain?

Sorghum is the usual base for baijiu, though some styles blend in other grains; unusually, the mash ferments as a damp solid with a starter called qu before it is distilled, as at Moutai.

Pisco, a grape brandy, is claimed as a national spirit by Peru and which neighbouring country?

Chile and Peru each call pisco their national drink; in 1936 Chile renamed the village of La Unión 'Pisco Elqui', a change linked to its claim on the name.

Greek tradition says 14th-century monks first distilled tsipouro in which place?

Mount Athos is where tradition places the first tsipouro; it was a thrifty spirit, distilled from the grape skins and pulp left behind once the wine had been drawn off.

Which Italian spirit is distilled from the skins, seeds and stems left over after winemaking?

Grappa is sipped after a meal as a digestivo, or tipped into an espresso to make a caffè corretto, literally a 'corrected' coffee.

Under EU rules, akvavit's dominant flavour must come from caraway and/or which seed?

Dill or caraway must dominate akvavit under EU rules; Norway's Linie brand adds a twist, sending its sherry casks by ship across the equator and back before bottling.

Pulque is made by fermenting the sap of which plant?

Agave sap, the aguamiel of the maguey, ferments into pulque, a milky drink sacred to the Aztecs; in the 20th century it lost most of its drinkers to beer.

Modern vermouth was first produced in the 18th century in which Italian city?

Turin is where Antonio Benedetto Carpano launched his vermouth in 1786; it caught on so fast that the city's fashionable cafés were soon serving it around the clock.

Angostura bitters are produced by the House of Angostura in which country?

Trinidad and Tobago has made the bitters since the 1870s, when Dr Johann Siegert's sons moved the business from Angostura, Venezuela, where he first mixed them in 1824; they contain no angostura bark.

What is the distinctive feature of the Angostura bitters bottle?

An oversized label and a yellow cap mark every bottle; the bitters inside began in 1824 as a stomach remedy devised by Dr Johann Siegert, and only later found their way into cocktails.

What does 'piña colada' literally mean in Spanish?

Strained pineapple is the literal meaning: colada comes from colar, to strain, a nod to the freshly pressed and strained pineapple juice the drink is meant to be made with.

Which San Juan hotel says its bartender Ramón 'Monchito' Marrero created the piña colada in the 1950s?

The Caribe Hilton credits Ramón 'Monchito' Marrero with first mixing the piña colada at its bar; the Barrachina restaurant, also in San Juan, claims a 1963 invention by Ramón Portas Mingot.

American engineer Jennings Cox is credited with which Cuban cocktail, named after the mining village where he worked?

Daiquiri is named after Daiquirí, a village near Santiago de Cuba, where Jennings Cox mixed rum, lime and sugar around 1898; a US Navy officer who tried it later took the recipe to Washington's Army and Navy Club.

Which juice gives a Cosmopolitan its pink colour?

Cranberry juice gives the blush; New York bartender Dale DeGroff polished the recipe at the Rainbow Room in the mid-1990s, finishing it with a twist of orange peel set briefly alight.

A Moscow mule is properly served in what?

A copper mug became the Moscow Mule's signature after vodka salesman John Martin toured bars photographing bartenders holding one; most accounts say he and ginger-beer maker Jack Morgan devised the drink in 1941.

Which rum brand holds a trademark on the Dark 'n' Stormy cocktail?

Gosling's has held a US trademark on the name since 1991 and has gone to court to defend it, insisting that a Dark 'n' Stormy be made with its own Black Seal rum.

Which tiki restaurateur claimed to have invented the Mai Tai in Oakland in 1944?

Trader Vic, born Victor Bergeron, said he first mixed it for friends visiting from Tahiti; his rival Don the Beachcomber countered that it was based on a drink of his own from 1933.

The Mai Tai is said to be named for a Tahitian guest's verdict on tasting it, meaning what?

Good is what maita'i means in Tahitian: the story has the guest crying 'Mai tai roa ae!', roughly 'out of this world, the best', and the first two words became the drink's name.

The Singapore Sling was created in the early 1900s at the Long Bar of which hotel?

Raffles Hotel bartender Ngiam Tong Boon is credited with it; the story goes that he made it pink and fruity so that women, who could not be seen drinking alcohol, could pass it off as juice.

Giuseppe Cipriani named his peach-and-Prosecco cocktail after a painting by which artist?

Giovanni Bellini's paintings came to Giuseppe Cipriani's mind when he saw the drink's pink glow, so the 15th-century Venetian gave his name to the cocktail of Harry's Bar in Venice.

Which bright-orange Italian liqueur did the Barbieri brothers launch in Padua in 1919?

Aperol was created by brothers Luigi and Silvio Barbieri, who set out to make a drink unusually light in alcohol, at just 11%.

Which cocktail combines vodka, gin, rum, tequila and triple sec with a splash of cola?

Long Island iced tea contains no tea at all; Robert 'Rosebud' Butt says he devised it in 1972 at Long Island's Oak Beach Inn, as his entry in a contest to invent a drink using triple sec.

The pisco sour was invented in the early 1920s by an American bar owner in which South American capital?

Lima was home to Morris' Bar, opened in 1916 by Utah-born Victor Morris, who is credited with the drink; his bartender Mario Bruiget later added the bitters and egg white.

Which cocktail is Dick Bradsell said to have created in 1980s London for a sleepy customer?

Espresso martini began as the 'Vodka Espresso': the customer asked for something to wake her up, and Bradsell said the coffee machine stood right beside his station at the Soho Brasserie.

Alcoholics Anonymous traces its origin to a 1935 meeting in which US state?

Bill Wilson and Dr Bob Smith met in Akron, Ohio, in May 1935 through the Oxford Group; AA dates its founding to June 10, 1935, the day of Dr Bob's last drink.

What is the nickname of the AA text that introduced the Twelve Steps in 1939?

'The Big Book' is the nickname of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 1939 text that set out the Twelve Steps; the name came from the thick paper used in the first printing.

The 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act cut what from states allowing under-21 purchases?

10% of federal highway funds was the price of holding out; South Dakota sued over it, and in 1987 the Supreme Court upheld the act in South Dakota v. Dole.

Systembolaget, the state-owned chain with a monopoly on selling strong drink in shops, belongs to which Nordic country?

Sweden's Systembolaget exists, in its own words, to limit alcohol-related harm by selling without a profit motive; you must be 20 to shop there.

The first Oktoberfest, held in Munich in 1810, was a public celebration of what?

A royal wedding: Bavaria's future King Ludwig I married on 12 October 1810, the party ended with a horse race, and the decision to repeat the race a year later began the annual festival.

Oktoberfest is held on which Munich site?

Theresienwiese means 'Therese's Meadow', named in honour of a Bavarian princess; locals shorten it to 'the Wiesn', which is also their name for the festival itself.

Beaujolais nouveau is made from which grape?

Beaujolais nouveau is made from Gamay, the grape of the whole Beaujolais region, fermented quickly by carbonic maceration for a light, fruity wine sold within weeks of harvest.

On which day is Beaujolais nouveau released under French law?

Third Thursday of November has been the release day since 1985; before that, from 1951, the date was fixed at 15 November, whatever day of the week it fell on.

At the 1976 'Judgment of Paris' blind tasting, French judges ranked wines from which region above France's best?

California's Stag's Leap and Chateau Montelena came top of the reds and whites in the tasting staged by British merchant Steven Spurrier, who had expected the French wines to win.

Which French ruler requested the 1855 Bordeaux wine classification for the Exposition Universelle?

Napoleon III wanted France's best wines shown off at the 1855 Paris exhibition, so Bordeaux's brokers ranked the châteaux in five tiers, a list that has changed only twice since.

Which is the only red wine estate in the 1855 classification not from the Médoc?

Château Haut-Brion, from Graves, had been famous for two centuries by then: Samuel Pepys praised 'Ho Bryan' in his diary in 1663 for its 'good and most particular taste'.

Phylloxera is controlled by grafting vines onto rootstock native to which continent?

Rootstocks from North America, such as Vitis riparia and Vitis rupestris, evolved alongside the phylloxera louse and resist it; European Vitis vinifera vines are grafted onto them.

Scotch whisky's first written record, from 1494, has the king sending malt to John Cor, a man of which calling?

A friar: the malt sent to John Cor was enough for almost 1,500 bottles, so distilling was clearly well established in Scotland before anyone wrote it down.

Glenfiddich, Macallan and The Glenlivet all come from which Scotch whisky region?

Speyside, the valley of the River Spey, has more distilleries than any other part of Scotland, drawn there by the river itself and the barley farms close by.

Which US state makes most of the world's bourbon, though it can legally be distilled in any state?

Kentucky distillers put their share at about 95%; a 1964 resolution of Congress declared bourbon a 'distinctive product of the United States', which is why no imported whiskey may use the name.

Which Baptist minister is often credited (probably wrongly) with inventing bourbon?

Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister who ran a distillery at Georgetown, is often credited with inventing bourbon by ageing it in charred casks, though no evidence shows he did; Heaven Hill's Elijah Craig brand keeps the name alive.

Tequila's denomination of origin covers the whole of which Mexican state?

Jalisco, home of the town of Tequila, is the only state covered in full; Mexico declared the name protected in 1974, so a spirit made outside the protected zone cannot be sold as tequila.

Which tequila category must spend at least a year ageing in oak barrels?

Añejo tequila rests at least a year in barrels no bigger than 600 litres; many distillers buy theirs second-hand from American whiskey makers.

Which Japanese spirit is distilled, often from barley or sweet potato, and bottled at about 25% alcohol?

Shochu in its traditional style is distilled only once, so each bottle keeps the taste and aroma of whatever it was made from.

Which beer style grew from the heavily hopped ales that London's Bow Brewery shipped overseas in the late 1700s?

India pale ale takes its name from that trade: owner George Hodgson sold to East India Company traders on 18 months' credit, generous terms that made his beer a favourite for the voyage.

Which Trappist beer is brewed at Scourmont Abbey near Belgium's French border?

Chimay comes from Scourmont Abbey, settled in 1850 by monks from Westvleteren, who took up brewing in 1862 and later cheese-making to support their community and the region around it.

Kölsch, a pale beer served in slim 200 ml glasses, may only be brewed in and around which German city?

Cologne's brewers guard the name: since 1997 EU rules have reserved Kölsch for beer made within 50 km of the city, on terms the local breweries drew up themselves.

What is the showy art of opening a Champagne bottle with a sword called?

Sabrage takes its name from the sabre; legend credits Napoleon's hussars, said to have opened bottles on horseback with their blades, and the blunt edge is all it takes to snap the neck off.

Which Japanese brewer bought Pilsner Urquell in 2017?

Asahi bought Pilsner Urquell and other Central European brands from AB InBev in 2017, a disposal regulators required for the SABMiller takeover.

Absinthe, the drink of Belle Époque Paris, was first made in which neighbouring country?

Switzerland banned absinthe in 1910, yet distillers in its birthplace, the Val-de-Travers, kept making it in secret until 2005; the valley's absinthe museum now fills the courthouse where they were tried.

Which compound in absinthe was blamed for its supposed harmful effects?

Thujone, a compound in grand wormwood, was blamed for absinthe's supposed madness-inducing effects; by 1915 the drink was banned in the United States and much of Europe, though the amounts were tiny.

Absinthe's historic nickname 'la fée verte' translates as what?

'La fée verte' means 'the green fairy', a nickname from absinthe's colour, which comes from the herbs steeped after distillation; the spirit is flavoured with grand wormwood, anise and fennel.

What is the practice of having another alcoholic drink to ease a hangover called?

Hair of the dog is short for 'the hair of the dog that bit you', from an old remedy for the bite of a rabid dog: placing some of the animal's hair in the wound.

What was the first practical roadside breath-testing device, developed in 1931?

Rolla Neil Harger of Indiana University developed the Drunkometer in 1931; the subject blew into a balloon and the breath passed through a chemical solution that changed colour with alcohol.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving was founded in 1980 by whom?

Candace Lightner founded MADD in 1980 after her 13-year-old daughter Cari was killed by a repeat drunk driver; the group helped push the 1984 national drinking-age law.

Temperance radical Carrie Nation famously attacked taverns with what?

A hatchet was her trademark: Carrie Nation called her saloon-smashing raids 'hatchetations', was arrested about 30 times, and paid her fines partly by selling souvenir hatchet pins.

False bravery from drink is proverbially which nation's 'courage'?

Dutch courage, the popular story goes, dates from the 17th-century wars in the Low Countries, when English soldiers took a drink of the local spirit to steady themselves before battle.

Which president rode at the head of a militia army to put down the Whiskey Rebellion?

George Washington led the militia into western Pennsylvania against farmers resisting a federal tax on whiskey; the rebels melted away, and he later pardoned the two men convicted of treason.

Which William Hogarth print shows a drunken mother letting her baby fall down a stairway?

Gin Lane shows the mother dropping her baby, a pawnbroker thriving and a coffin-maker busy, Hogarth's attack on cheap spirits; he paired it with the prosperous, healthy Beer Street.

Which small, sour, blue-black fruit is steeped in gin with sugar to make a traditional British liqueur?

Sloe berries grow on the thorny blackthorn; tradition says to pick them after the first frost, said to split the skins so the juice seeps into the gin without each berry being pricked.

Bass Brewery's red triangle holds what distinction in Britain?

First registered trade mark in the UK: the red triangle became number 1 on 1 January 1876, and legend has it that a Bass employee queued overnight outside the registrar's office to be first in line.

Which brewery's Elephant Gate in Copenhagen still bears the swastikas it used as a good-luck trademark until the 1930s?

Carlsberg took the swastika as a good-luck mark long before the Nazis did and dropped it in the 1930s once it became their emblem, yet the granite gate of 1901 was left as built.

The 'angels' share' of a maturing spirit refers to what?

Volume lost to evaporation through the cask wood is the angels' share; the escaping alcohol feeds a sooty black fungus, Baudoinia, that stains the walls of ageing warehouses and nearby buildings.

Jack Daniel's whiskey comes from a 'dry' county, where shops and bars cannot sell it, in which US state?

Tennessee counties are dry by default and turn 'wet' only by local referendum; Moore County, home of the Lynchburg distillery, has never passed one, a holdover from state prohibition laws.

Which two companies dominate Japanese whisky production and exports?

Suntory and Nikka dominate Japanese whisky; Masataka Taketsuru, who studied distilling in Scotland in 1918–20, built Suntory's first distillery before leaving to found Nikka in 1934.

Masataka Taketsuru built his Yoichi whisky distillery on which Japanese island because it reminded him of Scotland?

Hokkaido offered the cool climate, crisp air and good water Taketsuru had known while training in Scotland, so he opened Yoichi there in 1934; his Scottish wife Rita lived in the town until her death.

The 1608 date on Bushmills labels refers to a licence granted by which king?

King James I granted Sir Thomas Phillips a licence to distil in the area in 1608, the date Bushmills prints on its labels; the Old Bushmills Distillery company itself was registered in 1784.

Which vodka's bottle carries a medallion portrait of Lars Olsson Smith, the 19th-century 'King of Spirits'?

Absolut honours Smith for his 1879 'Absolut Rent Brännvin'; to undercut his Stockholm rivals he sold from an island outside the city limits and laid on free boats for customers.

Which navy ended its daily rum ration on Black Tot Day in 1970?

The Royal Navy ended the tot because the Admiralty judged rum incompatible with running complex machinery; sailors wore black armbands and one training base staged a mock funeral with a coffin.

Mount Gay, billed as the world's oldest commercial rum distillery, is on which island?

Barbados's Mount Gay, whose oldest deed dates from 1703, began as Mount Gilboa; it was renamed to honour Sir John Gay Alleyne, the friend its owner John Sober had trusted to run the estate.

Which beer began in 1926 as a Christmas brew named for the Christmas star?

Stella Artois was first sold in the winter season before going year-round; the 1366 on its label is the date its brewery traces its roots to, almost six centuries older than the beer.

Which Belgian beer style is fermented by wild yeasts from the air near Brussels?

Lambic wort cools overnight in a shallow open pan, the coolship, where wild yeasts and bacteria from the valley air settle in; a blend of young and aged lambic becomes gueuze, and one aged on cherries is kriek.

Corona beer takes its name from the Spanish word for what?

Crown: in Spain itself the beer was sold as Coronita, 'little crown', until 2016, because the Torres winery already owned the name there for its Coronas wine.

Which Bavarian brewery on a former abbey hill claims a founding date of 1040 and the title of world's oldest?

Weihenstephan, at Freising north of Munich, dates itself to 1040, when its abbey is said to have won the right to brew and sell beer; Bavaria's state has owned the brewery since the abbey was dissolved in 1803.

Port wine is produced in which Portuguese valley?

Douro wines took off in England after the 1703 Methuen Treaty cut the duty on them while war with France kept claret out; the wine is named for Porto, the city at the river's mouth.

Sherry is made primarily from which white grape?

Palomino gives a low-acid, low-sugar wine that makes poor table wine, which suits sherry: the character comes from the flor yeast and years of cask ageing, not from the grape.

Sherry was previously known in English by what name?

Sack is what Shakespeare's Falstaff calls it; England's thirst for the wine grew after Francis Drake raided Cádiz in 1587 and sailed home with 2,900 captured barrels.

Which sweet wine, praised in a national anthem, is made mainly from Furmint?

Tokaji depends on Furmint because the late-picked grape readily catches botrytis, the 'noble rot' that shrivels berries into concentrated sweetness; the anthem is Hungary's, which gives thanks for Tokaj's nectar.

In Canada, grapes for icewine must be picked at what temperature or colder?

Canadian rules require icewine grapes to be picked frozen on the vine at −8 °C or colder (Germany's limit is −7 °C), concentrating the sugars in the tiny amount of juice pressed.

Which Canadian province produces over 90% of Canada's icewine?

Ontario's Inniskillin learned the hard way: in 1983 birds ate its whole frozen crop, so it netted the vines and made its first icewine a year later.

Which Italian sparkling wine's grape was renamed Glera in 2009?

Prosecco had to become a protected place name, after a village near Trieste, so the grape took the synonym Glera; makers elsewhere could then no longer put the famous name on their fizz.

Nearly all cava, Spain's sparkling wine, is made in which region?

Catalonia's Penedès area makes the great bulk of it; Josep Raventós of Codorníu made his first sparkling wine there in 1872, after sales trips to Champagne showed him the method.

What is the dimple at the bottom of a wine bottle called?

A punt, or kick-up, has no agreed purpose; one account is that glassblowers pushed the base inwards so the scar left by the pontil rod could not scratch a table or make the bottle wobble.

The standard US liquor bottle before the metric 750 ml was known as what?

A fifth was one-fifth of a US gallon, about 757 ml, so the metric bottle that replaced it is only about 1% smaller, and the name has stuck to it.

Which country's cork-oak forests produce about half the world's cork?

Portugal protects the trees behind the trade: a cork oak cannot legally be felled there without ministry permission, and stripping the bark by hand leaves the tree alive to grow it back.

Once a cork oak reaches about 25, how often is its bark traditionally stripped?

Every nine years is the usual gap, and patience is needed: the first two strippings give rough 'virgin' cork, so a tree is in its forties before its bark is good enough for wine stoppers.

The scientist Erik Widmark devised a formula that estimates what about a drinker?

Blood alcohol content, in Widmark's model, is worked out from body weight and the amount drunk; it jumps with each drink, then falls at a steady rate as the body clears alcohol at a fixed pace.

The alcohol 'flush reaction', caused by an inactive ALDH2 enzyme, is most common among people from which region?

East Asia is where the gene variant is common; it lets toxic acetaldehyde build up after a drink, and the red face and nausea that follow may be why carriers have lower rates of alcoholism.

The drug disulfiram, sold as Antabuse, helps people stop drinking by doing what?

Making alcohol cause sickness was first seen by accident: in 1937 a factory doctor noticed that rubber workers handling a related chemical fell ill whenever they drank.

The oldest claimed traces of beer come from a Mount Carmel cave in which country?

Israel's Raqefet Cave has rock mortars where Natufian foragers seem to have brewed a gruel-like beer 13,000 years ago for feasts at a burial ground; a critic argues the mortars ground flour instead.

Which serving holds about one UK unit of alcohol?

A shot of whisky, 25 ml at 40%, holds 10 ml of pure alcohol, the definition of one unit and roughly what an adult's body clears in an hour, so a pint of lager takes two hours or more.

Which Sumerian goddess of beer is honoured in an ancient hymn that doubles as a recipe?

Ninkasi's hymn is detailed enough that San Francisco's Anchor Brewing followed it in 1989 to make a limited beer from the 4,000-year-old instructions, starting with twice-baked bread.

The oldest known winery, dating to about 4100 BCE, is Areni-1 in which country?

Armenia's Areni-1 cave held a wine press, vats and storage jars beside burials and drinking cups, which suggests the wine was made for funeral rites rather than the dinner table.

What does the Gaelic 'uisce beatha', the origin of 'whisky', mean?

Water of life probably translates the Latin aqua vitae, the alchemists' name for distilled spirit; English wore 'uisce' down to 'whisky', so the word on its own just means 'water'.

Ireland's earliest record of whiskey, from 1405, says a chieftain did what?

Died from excess: the Annals of Clonmacnoise say the clan chief took 'a surfeit' of spirit at Christmas, almost ninety years before whisky first shows up in Scottish records.

The word 'vodka' translates literally from Russian as what?

Little water is the diminutive of voda, yet Russians long called the drink 'bread wine'; the word's first Russian record, in 1533, is for a medicine brought in from Poland.

Which Polish vodka is flavoured with bison grass, with a single blade placed in every bottle?

Żubrówka's grass contains coumarin, which US food rules prohibit, so the vodka was illegal in America until its makers produced a reformulated version in 2011.

An 1806 newspaper's first definition of the cocktail joked that a drinker would 'swallow any thing else', making it useful to whom?

Political candidates were the target: The Balance and Columbian Repository called the drink 'an excellent electioneering potion' that makes the heart stout and bold while it fuddles the head.

Who published the first bartenders' guide with cocktail recipes in 1862?

Jerry Thomas wrote down what had been an oral tradition of recipes; a showman behind the bar, he juggled bottles as he mixed and toured Europe with a set of solid-silver bar tools.

What does the name Jägermeister mean?

Master hunter was a real rank: a 1934 law gave the title to senior foresters and game wardens, so Germans already knew the word when the 56-herb liqueur launched a year later.

Baileys' creators made their first batch by mixing whiskey and cream with what?

Chocolate powder was the missing piece for the London consultants who mixed the first batch in 1973, in about 45 minutes; they took the name from Baileys Bistro, a restaurant beneath their new Soho office.

Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge blends cognac with the essence of what?

Bitter orange essence meets cognac in a liqueur said to have been named by hotelier César Ritz, who called it 'a grand name for a grand liqueur' and poured it at the Ritz.

Drambuie's legend says its recipe was a gift from which fugitive, sheltered on Skye in 1746?

Bonnie Prince Charlie, the family story goes, rewarded Captain John MacKinnon with the recipe for sheltering him after Culloden; the liqueur itself was first made for sale at a Skye hotel well over a century later.

On a cognac label, what does the O in VSOP stand for?

Old: the grade reads 'Very Superior Old Pale', in English because British merchants were so prominent in the 18th-century trade; the future George IV ordered a cognac of that description in 1817.

Which brandy, praised by a churchman in 1310, is considered France's oldest?

Armagnac has the longer history but the smaller trade: it is mostly made and sold by small producers, while its younger rival is dominated by big-name brands.

Calvados is a brandy from Normandy made from which fruits?

Apples or pears are pressed, fermented and distilled; Normans take a small glass between courses, the 'trou normand' or Norman hole, which is supposed to revive the appetite.

Which London oyster-bar owner created the fruit cup that bears his name?

James Pimm sold his house tonic as an aid to digestion; the usual story is that he served it in a small tankard called a 'No. 1 Cup', which gave the drink its name.

Mint juleps are traditionally served in cups made of which metals?

Mint juleps go in silver or pewter cups, held by the base and rim so the outside frosts over; Churchill Downs serves tens of thousands at the Kentucky Derby each May.

Chef Joe Sheridan is credited with which 1940s drink for weary flying-boat passengers?

Irish coffee is said to have been Sheridan's answer when a flying boat turned back to Foynes in bad weather; a San Francisco travel writer tasted it later, and the Buena Vista Cafe was serving it by 1952.

Under EU regulations, only which two countries may label their product 'Sangria'?

Spain and Portugal alone may sell it simply as 'Sangria' under a 2014 EU rule; a version made elsewhere is an 'aromatised wine-based drink' and must say where it was produced.

The 1826 'Eggnog Riot', fuelled by whiskey smuggled in for a Christmas party, broke out among cadets at which academy?

West Point court-martialled the ringleaders and expelled several; one cadet put under house arrest but not dismissed was Jefferson Davis, the future Confederate president.

Kvass is traditionally made from a mash of which bread?

Rye bread or flour ferments for only about half a day, so kvass barely turns alcoholic; it is drunk as a soft drink, by children too, and was long sold from barrels in the street.

Chicha de jora, a beer brewed from malted maize, was the ritual drink of which civilisation?

Inca brewers were women trained in special schools, and the beer was drunk in vast quantities at religious festivals; mills thought to have made it were found at Machu Picchu.

Retsina's flavour comes from the ancient practice of sealing amphorae with which resin?

Aleppo pine resin once kept air out of the jars; when the Romans switched to barrels in the 3rd century it was no longer needed, but drinkers liked the taste too much to give it up.

Which Sicilian wine did Liverpool merchant John Woodhouse begin shipping to England after landing there in 1773?

Marsala tasted to Woodhouse like the Spanish and Portuguese wines then in fashion in England; he added spirit so it would survive the voyage, and by 1796 was back in Sicily mass-producing it.

Which wine is deliberately heated as it ages, a method copied from casks that improved on long tropical sea voyages?

Madeira shipped through the tropics came back tasting better, as its makers learned when an unsold cargo returned; they recreated the heat on the island in warm rooms called estufas.

Where must a beer be brewed to carry the Authentic Trappist Product label?

At or beside the abbey itself: the label demands production in the abbey's immediate surroundings under the monks' supervision, and was created in 1997 to stop commercial brewers trading on the Trappist name.

Which Havana bar did Ernest Hemingway make famous for its frozen daiquiris?

El Floridita in Havana, where Constante Ribalaigua perfected the frozen daiquiri, was Hemingway's regular haunt; his sugar-free double measure became known as the Papa Doble.

Which state produces the great majority of Mexico's mezcal?

Oaxaca's mezcal is traditionally handmade in small distilleries called palenques; one village can hold dozens of them, each using methods handed down through the generations.

Soju, traditionally linked with the city of Andong, is a clear spirit from which country?

Korea owes soju to invaders: the Mongols had learned distilling from the Persians and carried it to the peninsula during their 13th-century invasions.

Rakı, Turkey's anise spirit, turns cloudy white when water is added, earning which nickname?

Lion's milk, aslan sütü in Turkish: 'lion' is slang there for a strong, brave man, so the name carries the sense of milk for the strong.

Limoncello is traditionally made with Sorrento lemons, grown on the bay of which Italian city?

Naples looks across its bay to Sorrento, where makers steep only the lemons' zest in spirit until its oils turn the liquid yellow; Sorrento, Amalfi and Capri all claim the invention.

Which monastic order makes the herbal liqueur Chartreuse to a secret recipe?

Carthusians trace the recipe to a manuscript they were given in 1605; only two monks know all 130 plants in it, and the colour chartreuse is named after the drink, not the other way round.

Who first commercialised pastis, the anise-flavoured spirit of southern France, in 1932?

Paul Ricard launched 'Ricard, le vrai pastis de Marseille' in 1932, the first drink sold under the pastis name after absinthe's ban; his company merged with rival Pernod in 1975.

The name of the liqueur sambuca derives from a Latin word for which plant?

Elderberry, sambucus in Latin, gave the name, yet the flavour comes from star anise, whose oils turn the clear liqueur cloudy when water is added.

French agronomist Michel Pouget introduced Malbec in the mid-19th century to which country, now the grape's best-known home?

Argentina got the grape through an experimental farm at Mendoza that Pouget started at the urging of Domingo Sarmiento, later the country's president; its Malbec is softer and less tannic than the Cahors original.

Nebbiolo, the Barolo grape harvested late in October, is thought to take its name from the Italian word for what?

Fog, nebbia, settles over Piedmont's vineyards in the late-October harvest, and the grapes themselves carry a foggy-looking bloom on the skin.

The Sangiovese grape's name comes from a Latin phrase meaning the blood of which god?

Jupiter, or Jove, gives the Latin 'sanguis Jovis'; legend credits monks near Rimini with the name, and DNA shows Tuscany's signature grape is half southern, a cross with a near-extinct Calabrian vine.

The Spanish grape Tempranillo takes its name from the word temprano, meaning what?

Tempranillo means 'little early one': it ripens several weeks earlier than most Spanish red grapes and is the backbone of Rioja and Ribera del Duero.

DNA testing in 2001 matched Zinfandel to Crljenak Kaštelanski, a grape from which country?

Croatia had almost lost the grape: after years of searching, researchers found a vine with matching DNA in a single vineyard at Kaštel Novi, and the news set off a revival of planting.

Bordeaux's Malbec, hit hard by a 1956 frost, gave way to which grape, now the region's most planted?

Merlot gained because Malbec had proved so prone to frost, mildew and poor fruit set; Cahors, hit by the same freeze, replanted Malbec anyway and requires at least 70% of it.

Coffee and a shower are popular morning-after fixes, but what is the only real cure for a hangover?

Time is the only cure for a hangover, whose symptoms peak just as blood alcohol falls back to about zero. They can then drag on for 24 hours or longer.

Which rescue dog never really carried a brandy barrel, an image traced to an 1820 Landseer painting?

St. Bernard dogs never carried a cask on rescues: monks at the Alpine hospice deny that any dog ever did. They did keep casks around for tourists' photographs.

Despite the buzz of a first drink, alcohol belongs to which class of drugs?

Depressants lower the electrical activity of brain cells, which is what produces drunkenness. Stimulants, or uppers, are the opposite drug class.

A stiff drink feels warming, yet sending blood to the skin raises the risk of which winter danger?

Hypothermia becomes more likely because widened blood vessels carry heat to the skin, where it escapes. The drinker feels warm while actually losing heat.

A nightcap helps drinkers nod off, but alcohol suppresses which dream-rich stage of the night?

REM sleep is suppressed in the first half of the night after drinking, then rebounds well beyond normal in the second half, which breaks up the rest that follows.

Which feature of Champagne did a University of Surrey study find speeds alcohol into the blood?

The bubbles made the difference: five minutes after drinking, volunteers given fizzy Champagne had more alcohol in their blood than those given the same wine served flat.

The morning-after drink known as 'hair of the dog' is named after a folk remedy for which disease?

Rabies was once treated by pressing hair from the dog that did the biting into the wound. The drinker's version fares no better, and may only prolong the hangover.

Wine 'legs' reflect alcohol strength, not quality, in a surface-tension effect named after whom?

Marangoni flow pulls wine up the glass as alcohol evaporates and surface tension rises. Cover the glass to stop the evaporation and the legs disappear completely.

The bulbous red 'drinker's nose' is really rhinophyma, a severe form of which common skin condition?

Rosacea left untreated for years can thicken the nose into rhinophyma. No direct causal link to heavy drinking has ever been shown, though alcohol can worsen the flushing.

Alcohol boosts urination by suppressing which hormone that tells the kidneys to save water?

Vasopressin normally signals the kidneys to retain fluid, so less of it means more urine. The mild dehydration that follows feeds a hangover's thirst, fatigue and headache.

A failing liver lets bilirubin build up, turning a heavy drinker's skin and eyes which colour?

Yellow skin and eyes are the sign doctors call jaundice. It shows once blood bilirubin reaches double or triple its normal ceiling.

Decades of heavy drinking can replace healthy liver tissue with scars in which end-stage disease?

Cirrhosis develops in about 15% of heavy drinkers, while more than nine in ten get the earlier fatty stage. That first stage is transient and reversible.

Even light drinking raises a woman's risk of which common cancer?

Breast cancer risk climbs with every regular drink, and pooled studies find a small rise even in women who average less than one drink a day.

Regular beer drinkers run a higher risk of which joint disease, once called 'the disease of kings'?

Gout strikes when uric acid crystallises inside a joint, and in about half of cases that joint is the base of the big toe. The royal nickname came from its link with a rich diet.

Gallstones and heavy drinking are the two leading causes of sudden inflammation of which organ?

Pancreas inflammation, known as pancreatitis, is caused by gallstones or alcohol in about 80 percent of cases. Alcoholism is the single most common cause of the chronic form.

Which withdrawal state brings shaking and hallucinations 48 to 72 hours after a last drink?

Delirium tremens can last from one to eight days, and it is the condition behind the old nickname 'seeing pink elephants'.

Years of heavy drinking can enlarge and weaken the heart in a disease called alcoholic what?

Cardiomyopathy of the alcoholic kind is a dilated form: the heart cannot pump blood efficiently, which leads to heart failure. Quitting drinking is tied to fewer hospital admissions.

The cancer agency IARC puts alcoholic drinks in which class, alongside asbestos and tobacco?

Group 1 means there is sufficient evidence that an agent causes cancer in humans. Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer, bowel cancer among them.

Fetal alcohol syndrome is diagnosed partly by a smooth version of which groove above the upper lip?

Philtrum is the name of the groove, which flattens with increased alcohol exposure before birth. A thin upper lip and short eye openings are the other facial signs.

Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a memory disorder of heavy drinkers, stems from lack of which vitamin?

Thiamine, also called vitamin B1, is what the brain runs short of. The nutritional deficiency, not alcohol itself, causes the disorder, which has been reported in non-drinkers too.

First-aiders roll an unconscious drinker onto one side in which posture that keeps the airway clear?

Recovery position turns the mouth downward so fluid can drain from the airway, and keeps the chin well away from the throat. Arms and legs are nested to hold the body steady.

Alcohol and opioid painkillers are a deadly mix because both suppress the brain's control of what?

Breathing is run by brain areas that alcohol and opioids both suppress. Taken together the drugs intensify each other, so even moderate drinking can end in an overdose.

US federal rules bar which workers from going on duty within eight hours of an alcoholic drink?

Pilots must leave eight hours between a drink and the cockpit. The same federal regulation bars flying with a blood alcohol level of 0.04% or more.

An alcohol overdose can switch off which automatic response, putting a passed-out drinker in mortal danger?

Gag reflex signals in the brain are hindered by very high alcohol levels, so a drinker who passes out can choke. Blood alcohol can keep rising even after the drinking stops.

Which Scandinavian road-safety idea did the Harvard Alcohol Project plant in US TV shows from 1988?

Designated driver references were worked into shows such as Cheers and L.A. Law with help from networks and Hollywood studios. Scandinavians had been developing the idea since the 1920s.

Tainted bootleg liquor can blind or kill when it contains which toxic relative of drinking alcohol?

Methanol is broken down by the body into formic acid, which does most of the harm. As little as 4 to 15 millilitres has reportedly caused irreversible damage to the optic nerve.

From 2003 to 2012, alcohol was the top contributing factor in deaths in which US leisure pursuit?

Boating deaths were tied to alcohol more than to any other factor: it accounted for 15 percent of the fatalities in 2003 and 17 percent in 2012.

Heavy drinkers are warned off which common painkiller because the mix can cause severe liver damage?

Acetaminophen can damage the liver badly enough to require a transplant. People who have three or more alcoholic drinks every day are told not to take it at all.

'Booze bus' is the colloquial name for large roadside breath-testing operations in which country?

Australia uses the term booze bus for a fixed checkpoint staffed by ten to twenty police. Victoria was the first Australian state to bring in random breath testing, in 1976.

Which sedative, notorious for drink spiking, did Roche reformulate to release a blue dye in drinks?

Rohypnol, the brand name of flunitrazepam, was also made weaker and less soluble in the 1998 change. The drug was never marketed in the United States.

Which US measure covers a 12-ounce beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or a 1.5-ounce shot of liquor?

A standard drink holds about 14 grams of pure alcohol whatever the glass. A 12-ounce beer at 10% strength therefore counts as two of them.

Party lore says the rings on which brand's red plastic cup mark pours of liquor, wine and beer?

Solo refutes the claim, saying the markings are open to interpretation. Many of its cup designs do not have those indented rings at all.

In 2010 the FDA told makers of malt drinks such as Four Loko that which added stimulant was unsafe?

Caffeine was ruled an unsafe food additive in malt alcoholic beverages, and the FDA called such drinks a public health concern. Four Loko's relaunch dropped taurine and guarana as well.

Alcohol supplies seven calories per gram; which is the only class of nutrient that supplies more?

Fats lead the table at nine calories per gram, with alcohol next at seven. Proteins and carbohydrates supply only four each.

Which fellowship for families of problem drinkers was co-founded by the wife of an AA co-founder?

Al-Anon was co-founded in 1951 by Lois W., whose husband Bill W. had helped start AA sixteen years earlier. It adapted the Twelve Steps for relatives and friends.

Colleges such as Cornell shield students who summon help for a drunk friend under which policy?

Medical amnesty protects students who seek medical attention from punishment for underage drinking or possession. The idea began in universities and has since reached state law.

Which gemstone, Greek for 'not intoxicated', named a drinking-age campaign by US college presidents?

Amethyst was worn by ancient Greeks, and carved into drinking vessels, in the belief that it prevented intoxication. The Amethyst Initiative's signatories urged a rethink of the drinking age.

A partial alcohol blackout, with islands of memory amid the gaps, goes by which nickname?

Brownout, or grayout, is the casual name for a fragmentary blackout, the most common type. Alcohol temporarily blocks the transfer of memories from short-term to long-term storage.

Campus 'social norms' campaigns grew from a study finding students do what with peers' drinking?

Students overestimate it: researchers Perkins and Berkowitz reported exaggerated beliefs about how often and how much classmates drank. The same inflated perceptions turned up at many other colleges.

Which psychiatric manual merged alcohol abuse and dependence into 'alcohol use disorder' in 2013?

DSM-5 folded the two older diagnoses into a single disorder graded mild, moderate or severe. The American Psychiatric Association issued the manual in May 2013.

Which Chicago crime boss grew rich on bootleg liquor before a 1931 conviction for tax evasion?

Al Capone had seemed safe from the law thanks to profitable ties with Chicago's mayor and police. Federal authorities charged him with twenty-two counts of tax evasion instead.

Which American motorsport grew out of moonshine runners racing each other during Prohibition?

NASCAR's roots lie with bootleggers who hauled Appalachian liquor in small, fast cars built to evade the police. Junior Johnson, a 1950s star, started out running bootleg loads.

Which Soviet leader's partial prohibition campaign briefly cut drinking and lifted life expectancy?

Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign brought severe penalties for public drunkenness and restrictions on liquor sales. Four Soviet leaders before him had also tried to stem alcoholism.

Which Founding Father's Virginia estate housed one of the largest whiskey distilleries in 1790s America?

George Washington's distillery, beside his gristmill, was producing 11,000 gallons a year by 1799. His farm manager, James Anderson, had suggested the venture.

The word 'alcohol' comes from Arabic al-kuhl, a fine metallic powder once used as which cosmetic?

Eyeliner made from powdered antimony ore, better known as kohl, is the root of the word. Paracelsus later used 'alcohol' for a fine powder and also for a volatile liquid.

Which Nordic country kept strong beer illegal until 1989, decades after legalising wine and liquor?

Iceland lifted the ban on 1 March 1989, celebrated ever since as Beer Day. The most influential argument for keeping it had been that beer would tempt adolescents.

Neal Dow, 'Napoleon of Temperance', crafted an 1851 liquor ban as mayor of Portland in which state?

Maine's law of 1851 spread fast: by 1855 twelve more states had adopted total prohibition. That year rioters stormed Portland City Hall, convinced that Dow kept liquor in the basement.

A contest run by a pro-Prohibition banker coined which word for people who drank illegally?

Scofflaw was sent in by two separate entrants, who split the prize. The word, a blend of scoff and law, now covers anyone who flouts a rule, traffic laws especially.

Eight people died in 1814 when a London brewery vat burst and flooded a slum with which beer?

Porter burst from a 22-foot wooden vat, smashed the brewery's back wall and swept into the St Giles rookery. Brewers gradually stopped using such large wooden vats afterwards.

Which US state was the last to end statewide prohibition, holding out until 1966?

Mississippi kept its statewide ban for more than three decades after national repeal, longer than any other state. Almost two-thirds of all states let localities choose through local option.