Ever wonder how they drink in Panama? Finland? West Africa?

Jeff Cioletti’s book The Drinkable Globe: The Indispensable Guide to the Wide World of Booze is the atlas you never knew you needed, a surprisingly thick guidebook that takes you on a fairly deep dive into spirits both familiar and wholly obscure.

The book is divided geographically, with each region or country segmented from there by spirit. That means when you get to Iceland, you’ll be reading about brennivin, a type of schnapps. Cocktail recipes are included should you find some in your liquor cabinet. While you’ll find plenty of familiar spirits in here like Armagnac, gin, and mezcal, things get mighty weird when further-afield nations are surveyed — including Southeast Asia and, especially, pretty much the whole of Africa.

This is a book that could benefit greatly from photos, maps, and other illustrative content to help break up what can be a rather dense wall of text, but Cioletti packs so much information into the pages that it’s hard to complain too vocally. It’s the rare kind of book that outdoes the internet. You simply won’t find this kind of knowledge anywhere else.

Is it practical to know what Licor Beirao (a Portuguese spirit) is made from? Not entirely (and I’ve been to Portugal)… but if it helps you win a bar bet or two, who are we to complain?

A- / $15 / [BUY IT NOW FROM AMAZON]

The Drinkable Globe: The Indispensable Guide to the Wide World of Booze

$15

9

Rating

9.0/10

BUY IT NOW