August 20th 2011
Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on August 20, 2011.
Contrary to what its name suggests, spruce beer is a fir-flavoured, non-alcoholic fizzy drink. Native Americans were already brewing a coniferous decoction that they thought had medicinal properties, when Jacques Cartier borrowed the recipe from them in 1536 to treat his sailors who were suffering from a mysterious disease. This was, in all likelihood, scurvy, a disease resulting from a vitamin C deficiency.
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August 13th 2011
Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on August 13, 2011.
Cappuccino is made from espresso, hot milk and a topping of steamed-milk foam. It gets its name from the Capuchin monks, known as Cappuccino in Italian, because of the colour of their habit and also because of its hood of foamed milk.
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August 6th 2011
Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on August 6, 2011.
In the days of yore, plants were used to strengthen, heal and cure people long before medicines appeared on the scene. The word tisane originates from the Greek ptisanĕ, which was a brew made from ground barley. It includes any drink obtained from soaking or brewing or infusing flowers, leaves, stalks or roots in hot or cold water.
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July 30th 2011
Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on July 30, 2011.
Recent archaeological evidence shows that the earliest known production of wine took place in Armenia around 6000 years ago. An undeniably fascinating discovery, if we believe that Noah, the biblical Patriarch planted a vineyard on Mount Ararat after the flood, in a place that is not too far off from these archaeological digs.
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July 23rd 2011
Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on July 23, 2011.
Cider obtained from fermented apple juice is one of the oldest known alcoholic beverages in the world. Hippocrates, the Greek physician was already extolling its benefits in the 4th century BC. But cider really only took off after the cider press made its appearance in the Middle Ages. Thanks to its affordability – due to the strides made in the cultivation of apple trees – cider quickly became a popular beverage, to the point of rivalling beer and wine in France around the 13th century.
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July 16th 2011
Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on July 16, 2011.
Beer was probably first brewed around 6000 BC in Mesopotamia (current-day Iraq), and it soon became a part of the daily diet for centuries. It was made by cooking cakes of spelt and barley that were soaked in water to trigger the fermentation process required for alcohol production and then seasoned with spices.
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July 9th 2011
Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on July 9, 2011.
The most popular non-alcoholic drink in the world today after water and way ahead of coffee, tea originated in China around 2737 B.C. It’s a Portuguese Jesuit who introduced it in Europe in 1560.
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