Free The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks by Amy Stewart Page A

Field Corn, a standard designation that measures only the color and “soundness” of the grain—the amount of grain in a bushel that is undamaged, uninfested, and free of debris. But why not use artisanal, heirloom corn varieties to make bourbon? Master distiller Chris Morris, the brains behind Woodford Reserve’s line of extraordinary, award-winning bourbons, said, “We just want big, clean, dry corn. The starch is what it’s all about. The corn is pretty much just the muscle that we use to make alcohol. We’ve done distillations with various types of corn, and basically, corn’s corn. We even experimented with organic grain and we just couldn’t tell a difference.”
    But Joel Elder, from Tuthilltown Spirits in Gardiner, New York, sees it another way. “People say that the artisanship is in the distilling, and I fundamentally disagree. My opinion is that the distillation is the easiest part. The further back you go in the process—fermentation, grain handling and storage, growing—the more artisanal it becomes. Look at wine. In wine, we talk almost exclusively about the grape. Nobody does that with bourbon.” He has experimented with a number of different heirloom corns, including Wapsie Valley, known for producing red kernels. (The legend behind Wapsie Valley is that at corn shuckings, any man who found a red kernel could kiss the girl of his choice, and Wapsie Valley could turn an innocent gathering into a free-for-all.) He also grows Minnesota 13, a dent corn that was widely used for moonshine during Prohibition. “We get a big, buttery popcorn flavor out of these,” he said. “Does the variety of corn make a difference? I can run separate distillations of just those two varieties and make a believer out of anyone.”
    THE CORK OAK
    The native Portuguese oak Q. suber provides another essential ingredient to wine and spirits: the cork. The trees live for more than two hundred years, and by about age forty, they have produced enough of their thick, spongy bark to produce a harvest of four thousand corks. Stripping the trees of their bark does not hurt them because the bark regrows. In fact, cork growers argue, the ability to harvest the bark provides an economic incentive to leave massive stands of old oak trees intact.
    The increased use of screw tops and synthetic caps has hurt the cork industry in Portugal, Spain, and North Africa, where most cork forests are found. Growers insist that the natural corks are not only more authentic and better for the wine but are actually kinder to the environment than a synthetic replacement.
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    Angels’ Share: In storage, a small amount of alcohol escapes the barrel through evaporation. Distillers call this lost alcohol the angels’ share. Whiskey and brandy makers estimate that the angels get about 2 percent of the alcohol in a barrel each year, although that can vary depending on humidity and temperature. Fortunately, they can afford to lose some, as most spirits are aged at a higher proof than the final bottling. (Some water is lost as well, which can help keep the overall percentage of alcohol from dropping too much.)
    one result of this slow leakage of alcohol is that it attracts a strange creature rarely seen outside of distilleries. the black fungus  Baudoinia compniacensis feeds on ethanol and appears as a black stain on the walls of caves and warehouses where scotch and cognac are stored. european distillers in particular are not bothered by it; in fact, it is seen as a friendly companion and a mark of authenticity.
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    OAK
    Quercus spp.
fagaceae (beech family)
    Nothing tames a rough spirit like an oak tree . The practice of aging whiskey or wine in a barrel might have started as a practical solution to a storage problem, but it was soon obvious that something wonderful happens when alcohol comes in contact with wood—and oak in particular.
    Oak trees have been around for about sixty