Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits [Kindle Edition]

Jason Wilson (Author)

Book Description

While some may wonder, “Does the world really need another flavored vodka?” no one answers this question quite so memorably as spirits writer and raconteur Jason Wilson does in Boozehound. (By the way, the short answer is no.) A unique blend of travelogue, spirits history, and recipe collection, Boozehound explores the origins of what we drink and the often surprising reasons behind our choices.
 
In lieu of odorless, colorless, tasteless spirits, Wilson champions Old World liquors with hard-to-define flavors—a bitter and complex Italian amari, or the ancient, aromatic herbs of Chartreuse, as well as distinctive New World offerings like lively Peruvian pisco. With an eye for adventure, Wilson seeks out visceral experiences at the source of production—visiting fields of spiky agave in Jalisco, entering the heavily and reverently-guarded Jägermeister herb room in Wolfenbüttel, and journeying to the French Alps to determine if mustachioed men in berets really handpick blossoms to make elderflower liqueur.
 
In addition, Boozehound offers more than fifty drink recipes, from three riffs on the Manhattan to cocktail-geek favorites like the Aviation and the Last Word. These recipes are presented alongside a host of opinionated essays that cherish the rare, uncover the obscure, dethrone the overrated, and unravel the mysteries of taste, trends, and terroir. Through his far-flung, intrepid traveling and tasting, Wilson shows us that perhaps nothing else as entwined with the history of human culture is quite as much fun as booze.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Despite its flippant title, Wilson’s book has a serious purpose. Its author wants to raise the level of Americans’ appreciation for liquor, that oft-maligned beverage whose connoisseurs find alive with subtle and complex flavors and worthy of imbibing for delights far surpassing mere intoxication. Wilson’s quest for the finest liquors has taken him all over the world. He has sampled the delights of Peruvian pisco, Mexican tequila, and French cognac under some remarkable circumstances. He favors robust distillates such as cognac and whiskeys over the bland neutrality of vodka. He includes recipes for dozens of classic cocktails from New Orleans’ sazerac to the ubiquitous martini. Wilson marks the rediscovery and return of some classic gins and rare liqueurs such as crème Yvette. So long as people continue to enjoy their evening cocktails, they will find fascinating the lore of liquor that Wilson relates with such good, often ribald, humor. --Mark Knoblauch

Review

“Wilson, a natural storyteller, delivers a unique blend of humorous travelogue, spirits history, and recipe collection.”
—Wine Enthusiast, December 2010

“A longtime travel writer, currently a spirits columnist for the Washington Post, Wilson's book is part pithy memoir of a sambuca-soaked kid-turned-haute-liquor-pro, part homage to the beauty of odd bottles, part social commentary, and part irreverent travelogue that's at its most engaging when Wilson is on the road.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer, 12/16/10

“With recipes for all sort of cocktails and libations, plus lots of highly-opinionated rants and raves (and a few pot-shots at the big guys, like the €30 cocktails at the Ritz in Paris that use bottled juice, not fresh) it’s not as much fun as sitting with Jason around a table of spirits, ready to be sampled. But until we meet again, this book is the next best thing.”
—DavidLebovitz.com, Favorite Cookbooks of 2010, 12/6/10

“It's like reading a food memoir but with drink as the backdrop and instigator. . . .There is education here, certainly, but via a pleasurable, relaxing read. Like a fine drink, at its finish, I found myself thirsty for more.”
—San Francisco Bay Guardian, Appetite: Delicious giving, 12/3/10

 “This is not a cocktail book, per se, so much as a grand tale of Cocktailia, circa 2010, complete with heroes and charlatans.”
—San Francisco Chronicle, 5 Essential Wine & Spirits Books of 2010, 11/28/10

“A smart globe-hopping tour behind the scenes of the current ‘cocktail revolution.’”
—The Week, 11/12/10

“The Washington Post's spirits columnist since 2007, Mr. Wilson has never been one for 100−point scales and tasting notes. For him the best drinks are trips down memory lane. . . The wit and judgment that mark Mr. Wilson's column are evident through...

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 377 KB
• Print Length: 242 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: B008L5FO16
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press (September 21, 2010)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003E8AJ24
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #274,937 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #64 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Bartending

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun, Informative, and about Booze! September 3, 2010

By Rawim

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I think if I died and was reincarnated I would want to come back as Jason Wilson. That man has a job of traveling to drink and write about various distilled spirits, what a gig! The nice thing is that author realizes he is pretty lucky to be a "Lifestyle Journalist" and he doesn't take himself too seriously.
This book "Boozehound," comes off as part memoir, part travel log, part spirits review and part cocktail recipe book. And in all those things it makes for a fun read. Wilson takes on a trip through his past while commenting on learning to taste and understand the flavors in spirits. He discusses cocktail snobs, searching for lost spirits and liqueurs, the great stories (True or not) behind many beloved alcohol brands, the world of Italian bitter drinks, a whole chapter on aquavit, terroir and its effect on spirits, and much more.
At the end of each chapter the author always gives out a handful of cocktail recipes, which are neither recipes that you have seen a hundred times before or amazingly complex examples of molecular mixology. They are just straightforward recipes that use the ingredients discussed in the proceeding chapter and out of the ones I have made they have been pretty good.
So while this book seems to cross many genres, part cocktail history book, alcoholic travel log, spirit critique and tasting notes, humor, and personal history I found it an enjoyable read; I learned a lot and had a great time reading it. If you are interested in this kind of stuff then you will like the book too, and if you have a friend or family member who enjoys the history and stories behind different spirits, then I think they may like this book to. I recommend it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating read! September 4, 2010

By Eric Slay TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Although I am not "big" into spirits, I chose this book because it seemed like it would be an interesting read. What an understatement! This is a fantastic book that is well-written and filled with great insight, history, and wit. The best way to describe the author is to say he is a "foodie", but instead of being in love with all things food-related, he's a master of all things alcohol-related.

In a nutshell, the author recalls the stories and memories of times he drank various spirits, and then tells the history of the spirits themselves. This makes for a fun and interesting way to learn about both your favorite drinks, as well and many new ones you haven't heard of. In fact, the book can be quite an eye-opener for those of us who are accustomed to choosing from drinks such as Lemondrop Martinis and Jaggerbombs at our local bars.

In addition to the authors ability to tell a story in an insightful and witty way, the book also includes recipes at the end of each chapter that feature the spirits from the preceding pages. Although I didn't make any of the cocktails myself, they do look interesting as long as you have a BevMo (or similar) nearby to track down the often-times uncommon ingredients.

In conclusion, I found this to be a very entertaining and informative book about a topic I knew little about. This is definitely a one-sitter read that you could enjoy on a lazy afternoon. Highly recommended.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Glass Half Full September 2, 2010

By Bill Slocum VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

If you're not sold on the concept of a "liquor critic" going in, Washington Post spirits columnist Jason Wilson isn't trying to convince you otherwise.

Wilson's 2010 book, a series of essays on such spirits as rum, brandy, gin, tequila, and many less-common adult beverages, is half-journal, half-callout for interested drinkers to try more items outside of their comfort zone. "Try something strange," as he puts it. Wilson describes such dubious pleasures as washing down bites of rotting shark with a gnarly Icelandic aquavit, or partaking of various absinthes despite its legend for inciting homicidal rage.

It's a sometimes engaging book, yet not all that much fun. Wilson drinks with a triathlete's passion, but his adventures have a jaded feeling about them, a glazed ennui of shrugs and wisecracks that builds from chapter to chapter. Put it this way: Despite Wilson offering a number of unique cocktail recipes at the end of every chapter, I never had a hankering to try just one.

Wilson is writing here less as a full-blown critic, suspicious as he is of the language involved, and more as a memoirist. A drink for him is like a pop record to someone else, a means of recalling a specific place and time. Little wonder one of his best essays involves his visiting the Jagermeister plant in Germany, with happy memories of lost college evenings drinking same. He's surprised to learn "Jager" is actually sipped in Germany, not downed in shots like over here.

Many of the liquor makers he visits seem put off their hard labor winds up being diluted with tonic water or assorted other invasive elements. "Cocktails destroy good spirits" says one Swedish master blender credited with creating Absolut, the famous vodka.

Wilson offers his own ideas on what's good and bad. On the latter list, Jose Cuervo Gold ("If the tequila industry truly wants to improve the image of its product, then it ought to ban mixto altogether.") and the Pina Colada in its common, frothy form ("When it comes to making a pina colada, I want to preach two things: fresh pineapple juice, and coconut water instead of coconut cream.")

These opinions provide some needed centering. Otherwise there's a lot of chaff to sort through. Sometimes he derides "cocktail geeks", memorably exposing a quasi-private "speakeasy" as a lark, then cackling over its resulting demise with smug glee. Other times he's a bit of a snob himself, snorting at "meatheads" trying to order a beer at a fancy bar or Americans in Paris paying for overpriced cocktails they don't understand.

At one point, he stops to describe the experience of tasting Calvados apple brandy in France, a bottle from 1973 and then from 1963 ("one of the strangest, most complex spirits I've ever tasted.")

Then comes something even more incredible, a Calvados bottled in 1939, a rare survivor from before the German occupation. What did Wilson think? He doesn't really say. Considering the descriptions he does offer, like a quince eau-de-vie ("@#*&ing amazing. End of story"), maybe it was no big deal.

Wilson does keep you globetrotting, a drink at a time. But if you are looking for a contact buzz from all this second-handed boozing, you might wind up a bit let down.

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