Distilled spirit

[insider]

What was the first distilled spirit and where/when was it produced?

[Reeder]

Probably Brandy, distilled from wine.

France.

A long time ago.

[Nametag]

I’d guess that it was whisky in Egypt; Maria the Jewess (!) is credited with inventing the still there(or at least a kind of still) in the 3rd century BC, and we know that the Egyptians made beer…

[kniz]

Here are some quotes.

History of Korean liquor
In a country where fermenting was adopted as a common
culinary method before recorded history, the brewing of
alcoholic beverages most likely coincided with the advent
of farming thousands of years ago.

The earliest distilled spirit in Eastern Europe, known as “perevara”, was made of mead (honey wine) or beer.

The Oldest Chinese Characters are
discovered in Ju County, Shangdong Province, China¡·on 23rd. August, 1987, its subtitle ¡ Over 5,000-year-old-brewing-alcoholic-drink vessels are also discovered¡·, which shows that brewing of alcoholic drinks came into existence at least as early as 5,000 years or it originated even earlier than that time. In the distant ancient time, people chanced to find some alcoholic drink naturally fermented, then began to copy it.

Biblical wine reference touches all bases, “…… and Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine, and was drunken.” In Mesopotamia and Asia, indications are that the vine was cultivated about 6000 B.C.

and, yeah, there are also those guys down by the Nile.

[Reeder]

kniz…Be aware that brewing is not distilling.

[Dancing_Fool]

One of the earliest references I heard about (no cite handy, sorry) was not really distilling, but did fortify the result.

Take alcoholic beverage (wine I think) put it outside in cold weather. Wait until surface ice forms. Remove ice from top and throw away. Remainder of liquid is now higher alcohol content. Repeat as required.

From memory, I think it was the Romans who used to do this, but I ran across this a long time ago, so I could be wrong

[David_Simmons]

This from Britannica:

History of distilling

“Because the two ingredients necessary to alcoholic fermentation are widely spread and always appear together, civilizations in almost every part of the world developed some form of alcoholic beverage very early in their history. The Chinese were distilling a beverage from rice beer by 800 BC, and arrack was distilled in the East Indies from sugarcane and rice. The Arabs developed a distillation method that was used to produce a distilled beverage from wine. Greek philosophers reported a crude distillation method. The Romans apparently produced distilled beverages, although no references concerning them are found in writings before AD 100. Production of distilled spirits was reported in Britain before the Roman conquest. Spain, France, and the rest of western Europe probably produced distilled spirits at an earlier date, but production was apparently limited until the 8th century, after contact with the Arabs.”