Proof: The Science of Booze

by Adam Rogers

Fermentation is a natural process, as close to a miracle as a science-minded type like me would ever acknowledge. Over human history we’ve learned to harness and adapt it. We domesticated the microorganisms that make it possible, designed containers friendlier to it, created businesses around it. But a winemaker taking credit for fermentation is like a beekeeper taking credit for honey. Fermentation would happen whether men and women were here on earth or not. If a fig spontaneously ferments in the forest, a monkey is there to hear it. (And eat the fig. And get drunk.) Distillation, though, is technology. Human beings invented it; we came up with the process and developed the equipment. It requires the ability to boil a liquid and reliably collect the resulting vapors, which sounds simple. But to do it, you have to learn a lot of other skills first. You have to be able to control fire, work metal, heat things and cool them, make airtight, pressurized vessels. You need a big brain with a wrinkled cortex, maybe some opposable thumbs. But most of all you need a desire to change your environment instead of just live with what you have. Distillation takes intelligence and will. To distill, literally or metaphorically, requires the hubris to believe you can change the world.