The technology spread from a few medical schools and apothecaries to monasteries all over the continent and England and Scotland, if for no other reason than people like to drink and the economics make a lot of sense. Farmers could harvest all their grain or fruit, distill it down to a few easy-to-transport barrels of liquid that would never, ever spoil, and the liquid was worth more at market than the source material. Distillation was literally a transformative technology.
