Brandy

A little bit of information about brandy for those of you who want to sound very clever at the next social event:

The name brandy comes from the Dutch word brandewijn, meaning "burnt wine." The name is apt as most brandies are made by applying heat, originally from open flames, to wine. The heat drives out and concentrates the alcohol naturally present in the wine. While brandies are usually made from wine or other fermented fruit juices, it can be distilled from any liquid that contains sugar. All that is required is that the liquid be allowed to ferment and that the resulting mildly-alcoholic product not be heated past the boiling point of water. The low-boiling point liquids distilled from wine include almost all of the alcohol, a small amount of water, and many of the wine's organic chemicals. It is these chemicals that give brandy its taste and aroma.

It is unknown when people discovered that food could be converted to alcohol through fermentation. It appears that the discovery of fermentation occurred simultaneously with the rise of the first civilizations, which may not be a coincidence. At about the same time that people in Europe discovered that apple and grape juice, both containing fructose, would ferment into hard cider and wine, people in the Middle East discovered that grains, which contain maltose, would naturally ferment into beer, and people in Asia discovered that horse milk, containing lactose, would naturally ferment into airag. The first distilled liquor may in fact have been horse milk brandy, with the alcohol separated from fermented horses' milk by freezing out the water during the harsh Mongolian winter.