Eat My Globe

Interview with James Beard Award Winner, Noah Rothbaum

Simon Majumdar (“SM”):

Hey everybody, I'm Simon Majumdar and welcome to a new episode of Eat My Globe: Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Food. And in this case, drinks. And on today's very special episode we have a James Beard award winner. He's a man who has spent 25 years of his life seeking a wonderful drink around the world – sounds like my kind of gentleman – and has written books like The Business of Spirits, The Art of American Whiskey, and co-edited one of my own go-to books whenever I'm writing about drinks for this podcast, The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails. In addition to his fantastic books, he’s also written for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Daily Beast, Food and Wine and more. And today, he's going to be talking to us about the history of one of my favourite drinks of all time, Whisky, and about his new book, The Whiskey Bible, a complete guide to the world's greatest spirit. It gives me the hugest pleasure to introduce to you the one and only Mr. Noah Rothbaum.

Okay. Now, first of all, thank you for joining us. I've read so much of what you've written over the years. And so, I know that your book has only just been released. Is that right?

Noah Rothbaum (“NR”):

That's true. Well, thank you so much, Simon, for having me on your podcast. I'm a long time listener. So, I feel like I finally made it. You know, I took putting out this 600 plus page behemoth, The Whiskey Bible, which came out on September 9. So just a little while ago. So. . . .

SM:

I'm so passionate about this book, I have to tell you, because I've never seen anything quite as well laid out as that. But would you mind telling us before we go on to the book, would you mind telling us about how that response is going that you're getting from people and what else you're going to be doing soon? Because I know you're very busy.

NR:

Yeah, I mean it's, it's always a little bit terrifying when you work on a book for, you know, several years. I mean this one I started working on in January of 2020, my publisher, Workman, had approached me about doing a sister book to Karen MacNeil’s landmark, Wine Bible. So, you know, you work on something for so long and then you put it out there and people like yourself who I respect so much get a copy and read it and you know at night you think about whether they're going to like it or if you forgot something but so far people have been really kind about the book and have said really wonderful things about it which makes me feel so relieved and happy, you know, it's every author's dream to put something out and, and have people appreciate it and take the time to read it. So, I thank all of the people who've picked up this book and read some of it. I don't expect anybody to read it cover to cover. I mean, you're certainly welcome to, but I hope people kind of dip in and dip out and flip through and as they get whiskey or they hear about a whiskey or they see a whiskey, they'll then come back and open up The Whiskey Bible and read those entries.

SM:

Well, I will tell you that not only do I think that this book is beautifully written, I also thought it was very well set out. I wanted to ask you how that was done. Did you come up with that and then present it or did you or the publisher work on it? Because I want to say that it's one of the books that I think is the best of this year. And I know it really is.

NR:

So, thank you.

SM:

So, I wanted to know how you came about with that.

NR:

I mean, it's a wonderful question because this kind of book, the sort of size, this kind of scope, I think the hardest part is how do you lay it out? Right? Like, how do you, you know, how do you make it approachable? There's so much information. How do you set it up? And that is definitely something I struggled with for a while. And my editor at the time we went back and forth and I didn't want to do tasting notes per se because they so often, you know, their whiskies come and go and tasting notes sort of, you know, they're useless if a brand has changed the whiskey or changed the age or the, you know, so I thought, okay, let's, let's create, you know, for the main chapters, which, you know, about American whiskey, Canadian whiskey, Irish whiskey, Japanese whisky, Scotch, obviously, to do sort of the first half kind of culture society history, which to write about whiskey is really to write about the world, right? It's truly the intersection of culture, society and drinking. It all comes together. And I found myself reading all types of things from congressional records to tax documents to the minutes of publicly traded companies . . .

SM:

[Laughter]

NR:

. . . to distilling manuals to things about, you know, feedlots and raising cattle and grain. I mean, for, you know, I'm a New York City boy. I never thought I would, you know, dig that deep into farm practices, but here we are. But yeah. And then like the second half of the chapters, I kind of call like a family tree where, you know, so often people would come up to me and I would talk to them and I quickly became apparent that they didn't understand that like there are a few main holding companies, parent companies, the biggest liquor companies in the world. And they own sometimes dozens and dozens and dozens of different brands and dozens and dozens of distilleries. And sometimes folks assume that something like Woodford Reserve, which is a great whiskey from Brown-Forman, for years people would come up to me and say, I just had this new craft whiskey from a small producer. I'd be like, wow, what is it? It sounds amazing. Woodford Reserve.

SM:

[Laughter]

NR:

And I'd like, he has a great whiskey. It's made by Brown-Forman and they're like one of the oldest, you know, whiskey companies in America. And they also make Jack Daniels and Old Forrester. And like these people's minds would be blown. Like, wait, what? It's the same company as Jack Daniels. Like, yeah, it's the same parent company.

So, I put, I'm trying to tell those stories, the parent company stories, and then also the stories of their different brands so that people could understand. They could see all of these brands together, and their relationships and understand how that all kind of works together. So that, probably took the longest bit. I mean, now it sounds totally straightforward and logical. Like a lot of things in The Whiskey Bible, but took many, many hours, to kind of figure out.

And then, you know, we organized some of the information, you know, at the beginning of the book is sort of an intro and then like I had a drink it section. And then for whatever reason, I thought, okay, I should do a whiskey timeline from basically the birth of whiskey through its modern evolution, which people have done that for different whiskey, like, varieties like Scotch or American whiskey. But nobody, to my knowledge, has done it across all categories. So, it's kind of fascinating to see what global trends are happening, you know, in a certain year or a certain decade or certain century. And then I mean, at the time I was planning the book, I thought it would be great to do like a cocktails appendices. So, there are 30 classic cocktail recipes and then 30 modern classics. So, from bartenders around the world. So, which is kind of amazing, which is itself an own book.

SM:

I absolutely love this and what I want to do with all my listeners and we have a great deal of listeners, I just want them to go out and see this book and go and see if they want to buy it because it's a fantastic book.

NR:

Aww.

SM:

So, thank you for that. But yeah, this is a history podcast.

NR:

Yeah.

SM:

So, let's talk about the history because I know a lot about the history of it, but even this, I've read a lot about whisky, I've traveled to some whisky places. So, would you mind telling us about the kind of the origins of whisky?

NR:

Yeah.

SM:

And I started saying, well, the Irish and the Scottish. . .

NR:

Right.

SM:

. . . and they're going there having their battles. So could you, which I think in their own way, they do have, they carry on having these. And so, tell me about that beginning of the battles, as I said.

NR:

Yeah. Well, like you, I thought I knew the history of whiskey, right? And then I started this project and I started going down all these crazy rabbit holes. And, you know, a lot of it would start like, like, what is the Red Book of Ossory? Sounds like something from the Game of Thrones, but turns out to be like a religious text, you know, that's in Kilkenny, Ireland, and it's covered in a red leather cover. And that's why it's called that.

And like, you know, what does it everybody always talks about what it says about whiskey distilling and all the Irish whiskey brands cite the Red Book of Ossory as proof that they came first, that they were distilling whiskey first and then the Scotch followed in their footsteps. And wouldn't that be nice for Scotland or Ireland to be able to have definitive proof to say like we are the home of whiskey, right? I mean, like what an incredible honor that would be at a marketing coup for them to have that.

So, for years, you know people like all the Red Book of Ossory, you know, it has a recipe for making whiskey and I was like, you know what? I'm working on the Irish chapter. I'm like, you know, I've never actually seen what it says. Let me try to find it. That was easier said than done. I mean it was like literally I'd say two to three weeks of solid work trying to track down. . .

SM:

Oh my gosh.

NR:

. . . what like a translation of this like it's all in Latin. I was a world's worst Latin scholar. So, I finally get a copy, you know, in Latin and in English. It's nothing to do with whiskey, right? It's literally religious text. And I'm going like, wait, what is going on?

So, you go further down the rabbit hole, it turns out that like the Red Book of Ossory, like, yes, it was a religious text, but people were using it to write notes and stick in all types of other things into the book itself. And I finally found a article about the book in a like a academic journal from right around the turn of the century where it's talking about the Red Book of Ossory and especially the distilling part and it actually had the distilling or the so-called distilling part and it really is talking about wine, right I mean like the, the modern word whiskey comes from the Gaelic Uisce Beatha right don't ask me to spell it. It's, it's a, it's a wild ride that spelling. But that comes from the Latin aqua vitae, right? Originally, right? Which means water of life. So, just like vodka means water of life or eau de vie means water of life, so does whiskey. The original distillers, some of them were alchemists. They were looking for truly a water of life. They realized that alcohol had certain preservative properties, which it does. Unfortunately, it's not the water of life. If only it was, but it's not. And so, the original, you know, description there is really about distilling, you know, grapes and it's sort of this first leap of faith. Well, people make alcohol from what's locally grown. All right. I buy that, right. Whether it's fruit, grapes, grain, potatoes, old shoes, whatever it is, you turn it to alcohol. And so, the first leap of faith is that this idea that people in Ireland, you know, they didn't have grapes. It wasn't France. It wasn't Spain. That they would make it out of grain, right? So, okay.

But then you go down further and you realize that, you know, the Archbishop of Kilkenny where this book is, Kilkenny, which I didn't know was sort of a bastion of English power, right? When they took over and they colonized Ireland. So, this book belonged to the church in Kilkenny. Then the person who probably wrote these notes was English, right? So, you know, then that begs the question, which I guess nobody wants to ask. Is it really the English who were the people who were first distilling whiskey, right?

SM:

Oh.

NR:

If this book was from Kilkenny, but we don't really know who wrote those notes and we don't also know if they were really talking about distilling grapes or grain. It's not exactly the open shut case smoking gun that I thought it be like, oh this is gonna be easy. I'll find it. Quote this. Won't it be great? And it's like, no, it, it, it, we're still not exactly sure what it means.

The like, you know, the Scot, Scots have their own, you know, early reference to somebody like buying, you know, whisky, you know, and in sort of the official records. But again, like, I mean, these, you know, whoever, whoever made whisky first, the bigger point is it wasn't, they weren't making Macallan. They weren't making Glenmorangie. They weren't making Glenlivet, right? The original whiskey was unaged, flavored with botanicals and sometimes sweetened with honey or raisins, which to be honest is in many ways closer to our modern idea of gin than whiskey. So, you know it's it still takes centuries for it to evolve from that spirit to what we now know as whiskey. So, I mean in some ways it's academic like who made it first.

SM:

But what I was going to ask you as well is, was it predominantly medicinal at that point?

NR:

Yeah, I mean, I mean, all, all drinks, right, sort of started as medicinal, even a lot of the cocktails, right? It's, it's really especially, you know, even things like the mint julep, you know, you know, begin life as a medicinal concoction, right, where it, you know, it comes from the Persian word julab. There's rose water in it, right? It's medicinal, leave it to Americans to turn something medicinal into something recreational, right? So, when like something like the ming julep comes here, we, we make it into a party drink, right? Lots of ice, whiskey, rum, you know, back in the day, all types of delicious juleps, cognac. But yeah, I mean, a lot of these things were really considered medicinal. And even, yes, back in the day, I mean, like in the 14, 15, 1600s, but also through even like, you know, the... really through the 1900s, right? Almost to the turn of the century, even past the turn of the century.

And we see one of the great, one of the great things that happens to whiskey is phylloxera, which is this horrible little insect that eats its way across all the vineyards in Europe, right? So, it destroys the wine crops. It destroys the port crops. It destroys, you know, Cognac, brandy, Armagnac, none of this stuff can be made because there are no grapes, right? The vines, it sucks literally the life out of the vines, right?

So, I found all these really interesting articles in British like medical journals, you know, like kind of the Lancet of the day or the, you know, you know, the Journal of American JAMA, right? The Journal of American Medical Association, right? But that, whatever their precursors were in the 1800s, where the doctors, you know, who had traditionally prescribed Cognac or brandy for a range of maladies realized that, okay, we can't get Cognac or brandy. What can we prescribe? And they certify that they can, they can give their patients whiskey with the same benefits, right? And that was a giant boom for whiskey distillers, right? And really put them on a similar playing field as Cognac and brandy, but even things like, you know, the first whiskey in America to come in a bottle straight from the distillery is Old Forrester, which comes out in 1870. And it's marketed to doctors, not because they thought that the doctors would drink the whiskey, but because they wanted the doctors to prescribe the whiskey to their patients. Because through the 1800s, a lot of the whiskey made in America was like so-called imitation whiskey. And was like basically neutral grain spirit, like vodka flavored with all types of delicious substances like creosote and other truly, you know, horrible things that nobody should ever consume. And these things were passed off as whiskey. And if you even look in the back of like old cocktail books or bartender guides, you'd see like recipes for making whiskey, right? And of course, it was like essentially flavoring neutral grain spirits with all of these crazy things.

So, doctors were never sure if they prescribed a patient to take whiskey daily, that the whiskey that they would buy would do more harm than good, right. So, Old Forester comes out in 1870. It's really like a pharmaceutical product. It's so that a doctor could be 100 % certain that the whiskey that they were prescribing was completely pure, it was unadulterated and come directly from the distillery.

Because at the time everybody else was buying. . . You'd go to a store, sort of doubled as a bar, you fill up a glass, you fill up your flask, maybe decanter, you'd have a drink there and you'd go home and that was it. But like there was no bottled whiskey until really, you know, Owens patents his bottle making machine around the turn of the century, like a few years after the turn of the century. So again, I mean, the history like many things of whiskey is you're 100% right like completely tied into the history of like of medicine, right and, and, and doctors prescribing it as like a panacea for all types of medical problems.

SM:

I love this and that's why I want to tell people whenever I read this book, I was finding out lots of things and even, you know, and I study all of this and I've read about whiskey and I've read about and every time I read this book, I'm going, wow.

NR:

Thank you. Yeah.

SM:

And that's for me, what wow is a very good thing to be able to say. So, I am going to ask this because it's some. . . because everyone asks me why do whiskies have E or why don't they? And this, I've heard lots of theories. . .

NR:

Yeah.

SM:

. . . and I have my own, but I'd love to know your theory on this.

NR:

You want me to tell the truth?

[Laughter]

SM:

Yeah, I do. Because people give me all sorts of... Everyone I meet and sometimes the bartenders have their own story and you know, distillers have their own story. So, tell me the truth.

NR:

I mean, I, the truth is, is less satisfying than, than a romantic story that maybe the bartenders or some of the brands tell.

As far as I can tell, it's completely just made up affectation, right? Because it's nonsense, right? So going back like over a century, sometimes you see whiskey from the UK. There's no way. I mean, there's an E they're using an E right? It's W H, you know, W-H-I-S-K-E-Y and even in the Royal Commission on Potable Spirits that, you know, is convened, which is an incredible actually study that was convened in the UK around the turn of the century. They use an E-Y, right? There are American brands that just use a Y, right?

Then, so I mean, I think like a lot of things, you know, it's an oral tradition. This, I mean, as we discussed, a few minutes ago the whole term whiskey you know it, it evolves over centuries and it's transliteration anyway so you know just as like we see all types of spellings for martini originally we see it with whiskey too because I think people are yelling it over a bar. There's no standardization, right.

I mean there are no national brands in the US until after the Civil War, you know, we don't really even have like marketing and PR agencies, something that comes in, in the 1860s and 1870s and the whole idea of a national brand. So, you know, up until that time period, people are probably spelling things all types of ways. And then also, you know, you don't have any real trademarking, like until, like the 1800s.

So again, I mean, it's sort of inconsequential especially if you're not buying whiskey in a store with a label on it but you're in a, you know, you're in your like essentially five and dime buying everything and they have barrels and you're like give me some of that whiskey or whatever's in there right, you know, and it's not spelled out because there's nothing. . . . The most of those barrels were not even, you know, they even have names on them because people weren't buying them by brand, but just whatever the local distillery was. And again, I mean, I think this idea of like whisky versus whiskey is probably a very modern idea. If we were having this discussion 150 years ago, neither one of us even know that like, you know, you're supposed to use an E for America, no E for, you know, Scotch and Japanese whisky has no E.

So, I mean, again, it's at some point, we kind of took sides to differentiate ourselves and then other countries that sort of fell in that almost allies or they, you know, saw a similarity in style then also copied the spelling. So that's why Japan, which is so closely modeled on Scotland uses no E. Ireland, I think probably, you know, because they didn't want to do the English Scottish way they've probably sided with America, you know, but again, I mean it has nothing to do with the whiskey. There's no like royal commission, you know UN of spirits that decides these things where everybody meets and you know, and you know, there's no Hague Liquor Hague that decides, you know who gets the E and who doesn't. In fact, somebody like Maker’s Mark still doesn't use the E in America if you look at their bottles, which is kind of crazy.

SM:

I love this because, well basically you've told the truth so I love that about this.

Now, I don't know how possible this is, but in the rough sense could you tell people how whiskey is made?

NR:

Yeah, I mean. . .

SM:

And just simple and then we'll move on to some other things.

NR:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean whiskey can only be made from the one thing that we all can agree upon, right? There's the one thing that the whole world can agree upon about whiskey, is that whiskey is made from three ingredients, right? Grain, water and yeast, right. And then the grain and you know the water and the yeast essentially you use it to ferment it, right? So, you're making. . . you grind up the grain you kind of make like a oatmeal essentially. Then you're fermenting that liquid because you're turning the starches and the grain to sugars. Why? It's easier to make alcohol out of sugar than starch. You have to turn the starches to sugar. You cook the grain. You get this like very sweet liquid. You then ferment that liquid and you turn into beer. Right?

So, the first step in making whiskey is making beer. Right? It's unhopped. Right? So, we don't add hops usually and that kind of bitter note that you get, especially in IPA is not there. So, essentially, you're taking unhopped beer and you're putting it in a still and the still, why do we do it? Because water and alcohol separate at different temperatures, right? So that once it's heated up the beer, the alcohol leaves the still first, no matter what kind of still you're using. And basically, what happens is, that it raises the proof, the alcohol level of that, that spirit. When it comes off, it comes off in a gas. It condenses back into a liquid and what you have is a purer and higher proof spirit than what you started with. And that's, that's distillation. I mean distillation it's at its simplest is a separation process, right. You're separating the alcohol from the water. You're raising it you know in its, its level and you're also purifying it.

And then some whiskies generally are. . . you're using a pot still or distill two or three times which every time it goes through it gets purer and purer and the, the proof goes up because the copper of the pot still is, is pulling out impurities. If you're using a column still, which is one of these giant sometimes I say they're kind of the size of an elevator shaft. Aeneas Coffey, who was an Irish man, patented his, his design for continuous column still in 1830 and it really catches on not in Ireland, ironically, that's a whole lot this other episode that we could spend talking about that. But you know it catches on around the world. That's what we make American whiskey on that takes roughly 60 to 90 seconds from the beer entering that uses steam. The steam comes up. It separates the alcohol from the cold beer that's being tripped in with all the feed, you know, a pot still was made out of copper and used to be heated directly over fire. Now it's usually heated by like steam coils, essentially, which is a lot safer, obviously, because you're dealing with high proof alcohol and having it over a open flame. You can imagine it's not, it's not, it's not an ideal scenario. So, um, I mean, that's the basics of distillation. You know what makes whiskey, whiskey is that it has to age in a barrel, right?

SM:

Yeah.

NR:

So, it comes off the still perfectly clear. All the color comes from the barrel and a lot of the flavor comes from the barrel.

SM:

And that's what I wanted to ask you about. First of all, though, I wanted to ask you about this thing that I learned and I was reading the book and suddenly I saw this thing about it becoming a green product now. Yeah, and I've never heard of that before. And so, I was going to ask you. Do all the companies like Diageo or anyone, do they have a green kind of unit in their thing and how do they study that?

NR:

It's a great question. I mean, basically, you know, my editor for the book, one of their questions was like, you know, is whiskey green? Right. And I, and in certain ways it is, right. I mean, it's part of originally whiskey was a foreign product, right. It was part of a circular economy, right. Farmers would grow grain. It was hard to preserve grain. The make turning into whiskey allowed it to be a lot more shelf stable, increase its value. You also, the leftovers from the whiskey making process would feed cattle. The cattle dung would then be used to grow the next crop of wheat or grain. It's just totally circular. I always like to say, we talk about these things in our modern terms.

Back in the day, if you were running a farm, that was the difference between surviving the winter or not, right? You didn't throw away anything on a farm, right? Everything was used or reused, you know, zero waste farmers invented long before we started talking about zero waste.

The other thing, you know, we were just talking about whiskey and aging and barrels in America, we only use new oak barrels, right? That was something that came in. Again, one of the things I was able to finally figure out when that happened. A lot of people have a lot of romantic ideas for it. But basically, that rule came in after the repeal of Prohibition in the thirties. The Coopers, the folks who were making barrels, you'd already lost the beer industry who would move to stainless steel or steel first and then stainless steel tanks. So, they could not lose the whiskey makers, right? Or they would really be in trouble. There's also, you know, after, you know, the Depression is still going on. So, you know, obviously people losing their job is not ideal. We want to put as many people back to work as possible. So, you know, we make this the federal government, the so-called FAA, then the federal alcohol administration. They're still there. They're there. They're kind of they're creating these rules for what each whiskey should be or all spirits.

So, they say that American whiskey has to be aged in a new oak barrel. It really benefited the bourbon folks because bourbon really benefits from a new oak barrel. I think part of it was that they were trying to hurt their rivals, the rye producers, because rye doesn't.

It's harder to use a new oak barrel for rye and a lot of the rye producers were using used barrels over and over again. So, there's a way for the bourbon producers to really stick it to their rivals.

And, you know, but in our modern day, people are like, wow, that's so wasteful that distillers can only use a barrel once what happens to the barrel. And, you know, most of them, some of them are turned into planters that you can buy your garden center. But most them go around the world. So, you know, many Scotch brands use, use American oak barrels, tequila, aged tequila, Reposado, Añejo tequilas, they use a barrel. Dark rums, they all use American whiskey barrels. So, our American whiskey barrels go around the world after they're used here, which is green in itself. I mean, you have to then figure in the shipping costs and the, you know, the carbon footprint of shipping barrels. I mean, they're breaking them down, but, in those other markets, they’re often used literally over and over and over again until they have nothing left to give, right? Because alcohol is a solvent. It's breaking down the wood, the compounds in the wood, literally. As the temperature fluctuates, the pressure inside the barrel goes up and down, which forces the alcohol in and out of the wood. Each time it goes into the woods, pulling stuff out, right? The flavors, different chemicals, like flavor compounds, chemical compounds, which then mature over time in the barrel.

So, we're literally breaking down the barrel. So, at a certain point, the barrel has nothing left to give. It's just a container. But a lot of folks around the world, that's two, three. It's like using a tea bag, right? In some parts of the world, people use, like in America, we usually use a tea bag once, right? But with certain types of tea, like oolong or others in other parts of the world, like China, Japan, people have this idea that the second, third, fourth, sometimes brewing is better, right? You get other flavors. It's more nuanced, right? It's not as sharp. It's kind of the same thing with the barrel, right? When you're using it to age other spirits. Sometimes people like that because it's not, there's not as much wood and something like single malt scotch, which is made from barley is a little bit more gentle flavor and you don't want that huge wood tannin to overwhelm the barley.

So, it's actually a second fill or third fill barrel to use the parlance of the whiskey industry is actually better for things like whiskey. But you're right. I mean, there I feel like I'm bringing it around to your original question about it being green. And yes, like a lot of the big companies have invested to make their distilleries ever more green, right. I mean, making whiskey takes a ton of natural resources, right. Grain, water, water for, you know, obviously we need it for making whiskey, you know, also cooling the vapors, heating it up. Like, I mean, it requires a lot of water. So, people, you know, are trying to, you know, use less water, like catch that water, try to catch the heat, right? Try to even instead of using the animal feed, the leftover leftovers from the whiskey making process as animal feed. Sometimes people are using what are called bio digesters to like literally, you know, like use the leftovers to give off its own heat, collect the methane and other things and use all of that to then heat the next batch of, you know, the stills for the next batch. And it's, so it is more zero waste.

I mean, again, I mean, it's never gonna be, you know, a hundred percent green. It can't be because, you know, we're using natural resources like grain and water but we certainly can make it ever more efficient and the big brands and even some of the small brands have invested a lot trying to make the process as efficient as possible so we're using the least amount of energy or even you know sometimes rethinking some of the things that we've always done and kind of thinking okay like if we need, you know, why are we heating, you know, something like the fermenters to X temperature when they only need to go 20 degrees less. Yes, we've always done it that way. But why? It would be a lot greener and also less expensive if we didn't heat it all the way and it's not necessary. Some of these things that we've just always done it this way turn out to be maybe kind of inefficient.

So, some of these brands are definitely rethinking everything to make things as efficient as possible, which for an age old industry like whiskey, I think sometimes can be a little scary and a little intimidating. People certainly do not want to change things if they don't have to because they're afraid that you're going to affect flavor. And sometimes, you know, the, the hard thing about making whiskey is that we don't sell it immediately, right? Vodka, you know, Sidney Frank, who created Grey Goose, famously said, you make vodka today, you sell tomorrow, which why he loved it. There was no barrel aging.

The problem is that if you change things when you're making whiskey, you may not realize for eight years or 10 years or 12 years that you've changed the flavor, right? So, people are always very hesitant to change the process unless they know that it will have no effect upon the flavor or will have a beneficial effect on the flavor, which is why nobody wants to use GMO corn because they're worried that like in 10 years, people aren't going to want that and then what are they going to do with all these barrels full of whiskey that nobody wants? So again, it's like you're making it what you're making today. Nobody's going to drink sometimes for four, six, eight, 10, 12, 20 years down the road. So, it's a very hard thing to forecast.

SM:

Fantastic.

One of the things I wanted to do as well though, is not all of those, you know, the whiskeys that we have in the world, because that's just too long, but I wanted to talk about some of them. And I know that in Scotland we have five, people are now saying six because they're talking about other areas that have come in. But I particularly love Islay.

NR:

Yeah.

SM:

And so, I remember that I once went with the guy who owns Compass Box to Islay and we went to work at Kilchoman just before that had started and I went with another bartender called Nick Strangeway. . .

NR:

Oh sure.

SM:

. . . and we all went up there together and we had great fun apart from the malting. But anyway, so I would love people to understand that one because I love. . . .

NR:

Yeah.

SM:

That's the area I love most of all. So, describe that one. And people, what I want is for people then to buy your book and to read more about all the whiskeys.

NR:

Yeah.

SM:

But I wanted them to describe what Islay is.

NR:

Well, I mean, Islay, you know, is off the west coast of Scotland. It's a, it's a large ish island. I mean, I live on an island too, Manhattan, although I don't think the people at Islay would think that we both live on an island. But Islay is an island off the west coast of Scotland. And, you know, it's the type of place I think there are eight or nine distilleries now. They keep opening them and sometimes they close, but it's really known for this incredibly pungent style of whiskey, right? Smokey, peaty whiskey, the so-called maritime malts that kind of reflect the sea, right? You can taste the sea sometimes, the salinity, you know, it's, you know, we, you know, I think sometimes it's very hard for whiskey drinkers when they first taste an Islay whiskey, because it's a lot, right? You get, sometimes, they say burning tire or bananas or band-aids, right? And there are no wrong, whatever you smell or taste, it's obviously correct because it's your own mind, right? Your own head. But you get these really big flavors.

Traditionally, these whiskies went into blends, right? Things like Johnnie Walker, Chivas Regal, Dewars, right? And they provided this incredible bass note, right? Almost like you think about it like music, right? Kind of like what a bass or drums would lay down, right? And then the other whiskies from around Scotland would be the rhythm guitar or the singing, right? And Islay kind of gives that nice, you know, thumping baseline, right. But you only need a little bit of blend. But then, you know, in the 70s, 80s the whiskey market crashed around the world and the single malt, you know, makers and single malt it just means that literally you're making whiskey from 100 multi barley. It comes from one distillery. The barley is malted which basically barley I like to say is like, it's like the wolverine, the x-men, you know. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

NR:

. . . of grains because barley is incredible. And one of the few things that can turn. It has the enzymatic powers. Again, I was the world's worst biology student, chemistry student, but it has the enzymatic powers to turn its own starches to sugar, right? And again, if you're making alcohol, you want sugar, you don't want starch. So basically, you have to trick the barley into thinking that it's starting to grow, which means basically you just put it on a floor and you wet it and right before it starts to actually grow because then it would use all the sugar to grow and you don't want that. You don't want barley plants. You want sugar. You bake it, right. You bake it to end it, right. So, you're, you're, you're essentially turning off that the starches have turned to sugar. You don't have any shoots yet really so you bake the barley. You can bake it in like an oven, right, which would have no flavor. But on Islay what you know in a lot of parts of Scotland they would, they would bake it over like a peat fire, right. And peat is this incredible organic matter decaying leaves and roots and I never really thought about it which sounds so stupid but like depending upon what peat bog you go to and what is decomposing, the peat will have a different flavor, different smoke.

SM:

Absolutely.

NR:

And, and what. . . . There's an incredible book of poems by Seamus Heaney about the bog men because I know hundreds of years ago, if your townspeople didn't like you or you had done something heinous, you'd be thrown into the bog, executed, thrown in the bog. And the bog, the chemicals in the bog would preserve these people. So, occasionally they would find these like incredibly preserved people, which is what the Seamus Heaney poems are about.

But basically over time, the bogs, like these peat bogs, you can cut out blocks of the peat, and can dry them and because there aren't forests and trees like we know in North America, people use peat as a renewable energy source. They were burning it kind of like coal to keep warm, to cook their food, and of course, like, you know, to run their ovens to cook the barley for whiskey. So, as a result, all of that peat flavor you're releasing, I don't know, sometimes decades or centuries of all this organic matter, which is also kind of interesting, right? Because I sort of see whiskey as like a moment in time in a bottle, right? You're capturing moment. And when you're burning, when you're harvesting, being burning it, it's almost like you're releasing all of this time that's been captured, right? And then use the barley with this incredible smoke. It's like being around the campfire. And I've tasted some of the malted barley that Laphroaig uses that has that smoke. It almost tastes like if you had grape nuts that were smoked over, you know, a campfire, like a wood fire. And you get this amazing. . .

SM:

I love those whiskies. I just absolutely love. . . And that's the whisky that I in fact use the Compass Box Peat Monster. . .

NR:

Oh sure.

SM:

. . . which is probably my. . . . It's the whisky that I always have out here.

NR:

Great.

SM:

And that's always my. . . . So, it has a little bit of whisky from the mainland as well.

NR:

Yeah.

SM:

So, it takes it up and that's my favorite whisky ever. So, I love all those whiskies.

NR:

And if you go to Islay like or the west coast of Scotland, Skye, or even you know towns on, on the west coast that are part of Skye like open I mean really anywhere in Scotland. Sometimes you get, you know, like a in America. We think of summer, right? It can be 120 degrees New York, California, Vegas anywhere the south right high humidity, high heat. Not so much in Scotland. 65 degrees like Fahrenheit, right? Not Celsius, Fahrenheit, in the, you know, the in the deep summer, right? And also you get on the coast lots of cold rain like sideways rain and wind, right. Like kind of like I kind of think about it like in you know, I live in New York and people always say to do you like the Islay whiskies and when would you drink them and I said I like to drink them in winter when I’m coming home and you know it's February or late January and the sun goes down around four o'clock and there's two to three inches of slush on the street and you're crossing, you're crossing the street and you step what you think on to side you know to the roadway but it's really a pothole that's just deep enough. That nearly frozen water goes right on top of your boot.

SM:

Oh.

NR:

And soaks your sock, right. And you get home and you have one foot that's like basically frozen. And you're wet and you're tired and you're like, you know what I need? I need some Islay whisky, right? I need the campfire to dry off. But the craziest thing that...

SM:

That's an amazing description of it. I'd never thought of it like that. But again, speaking to you about it, that is such a great way of describing that whiskey.

NR:

Oh, well, and the crazy, the craziest thing about these whiskies is and I don't know why and, and that's a lot of writing about whiskey is admitting when you don't know why right being honest enough to say, we don't know why which makes it in some ways more fascinating. But at a certain point some of these super peaty like very smoky whiskies after 30 40 50 60 years, the craziest thing happens. They develop tropical fruit notes.

SM:

Oh.

NR:

Like the smoke, the peat disappears and I don't mean it like the wine folks, you know the wine people be like no offense to them but like they'll be like, I taste like peaches in this wine. You're like, really, like tastes like red wine to me. Like tastes like white wine. I don't peaches like I don't know like raspberry. No, this whiskey when I say it tastes like mango and papaya, it really tastes like tropical fruit notes. I remember tasting a Bowmore, which one more again is like very, very big whiskey, tremendously peaty, smoky. I tasted one of the so-called Black Bowmore and I had like a little bit in a test tube and I came home and I gave it to my wife and I said, you gotta try this. I mean, it was like a $35,000 bottle of Scotch which is, mean, that's, a whole other discussion, but, this little, you know, this little ball of whiskey rolled down the test tube onto her tongue and she said, oh, I hate this, you know, I hate papaya. Why did you give this to me?

SM:

[Laughter]

NR:

Ugh. Ugh. I hate tropical fruit. I said exactly. That why does this. . . . It's Scotch. This is the most peaty funky scotch and after some reason I mean it is on an island. It's not the Caribbean, but it is on an island. At a certain point for whatever reason, the flavor compounds, somehow mutating, change and evolve. So, they go from smoky peaty to like tropical fruit. And it's like one of the most incredible evolutions that I've ever witnessed. And it's one of these sort of magical things because whiskey making as much as it's a science, it's also an art. And we don't really know sometimes how things are going to work out once it goes in the barrel. And I love that about whiskey.

SM:

Which is why you have those real blenders who understand everything and working, like you said, 12, 15 years ahead.

So, yeah, we've got lots of questions here, but I want to kind of talk about some of the whiskies from America. And then maybe we can talk about some of the whiskies from around the world. And, you know, I've got India. . . .

So, first of all, and you know this, I know you could explain this as you do in your book, but where is bourbon from? Because a lot of people go, it's from Kentucky and that's it. But I don't, I want you to describe it.

NR:

Well, I mean as a Kentucky Colonel, I will, I will tell you the truth and I, and I will, if you ask people in Kentucky where bourbon is from they will say only from Kentucky. That is not true. Bourbon, bourbon has to be made in the US anywhere in the US right? So that, that's thanks to a congressional resolution that passed in the 1960s. Before that, bourbon was made in Canada. Sometimes it was made in Mexico. It could be made anywhere, but we kind of claim that as our own. Just like Champagne can only come from Champagne. You know, we kind of claim that as a marketing ploy, you know. Congress also called bourbon America's native spirit. Not true. I mean, if you can imagine that Congress got something wrong, it, you know, we're really a nation of rum drinkers, like before the American Revolution, we were making and drinking rum, fruit brandies, right? That's why Johnny Appleseed was planting all those apple trees, all the peach trees, all of, you know, all over America, right.

SM:

All the Applejack and-

NR:

Exactly all that is all that stuff, right. And then once the American Revolution happens then we become a nation of whiskey drinkers. But we're not even drinking bourbon then. We're drinking rye like George Washington after he leaves the White House thanks to his plantation manager, a man named James Anderson, who's Scottish, opens up a distillery in Mount Vernon, which is making rye and fruit brandy and they make the, you know, it runs I think for two or three years until Washington, you know, his untimely death. But he was the largest producer of rye whiskey in the country at the time. So yeah, I mean, bourbon, you know, is highly codified by federal regulations. We made anywhere in the US, it has to be at least 51 % corn, it has to be aged in a new chard oak barrel, right?

Other than that, generally, there's a little bit of malted barley which helps with the fermentation process. And then either rye as the third grain or sometimes wheat like Maker’s Mark or well or a Pappy Van Winkle so called we did bourbon. And then, there are, you know, there are obviously very, very specific federally federal regulations about making bourbon, you know, which is unusual because you know, Scotch also has similarly very rigorous regulations. But places like Canada, Japan have much less rigorous regulations, which, you know, sometimes leads to more creativity and innovation. But it's also harder to say what is and what is not some of these whiskeys were bourbon. They're very, very specific rules and regulations that distillers have to follow if they want to use the term bourbon, which is certainly advantageous because, you know, drinkers around the world look for that.

SM:

Yeah, and you can see that it's. . . . Actually bourbon is suffering a little bit at the moment, but I, which is happening for lots of reasons.

NR:

Yeah.

SM:

But bourbon has just exploded from what it was even 10 years ago.

NR:

Absolutely, absolutely.

SM:

Yeah.

Why is Pappy Van Winkle venerated, I want to say, because it, which it is.

NR:

Yeah, I mean, it's yeah, I mean, I think that people who know nothing about whiskey know the name Pappy Van Winkle, right? And, you know, and in many ways, you know, the Pappy Van Winkle is not just a person, but almost like a force, right? That's pulling people to drink whiskey. I mean, I think it's, it's, it became synonymous with this bourbon boom, right? And people know that these whiskeys are very valuable. Whiskey went from becoming a beverage to an investment vehicle. These bottles that once sold for $35, $50, $100 now sell for $2, $3, $4, $5, $6,000, right.

SM:

Yep.

NR:

It became a luxury item. It transcended liquor and became a real luxury item, whether a Rolex or, you know, a Aston Martin, right? It became one of these things that people don't just buy to drink, now, they think it's going to go up in value and people who want to show off, you know, cling to these types of things because part of it in America, we don't really, thanks to Prohibition, we don't really know anything about cocktails and spirits. I like to say most people drink out of fear, right?

SM:

[Laughter]

NR:

Fear that somebody's going to say, why did you order that? And we don't know. So, we order what, you know, our relatives, our mothers, fathers order, what our bosses or colleagues order, what James Bond orders in the movie, what George Clooney tells us to order. Right. So at least that, you know, somebody says, why'd you order it? You can say, well, like, you know, James Bond, like 007, of course, like, you know, whether or not we like that drink, at least there's something to, to, that we can, that we can some explanation as to why we ordered it, right? If in food, if somebody said, why'd you order the chicken? You'd be like, why do you care why, you know, why I ordered it? But we have this as a, as a nation, the sort of complex about drinks and it's sort of the idea of almost like the wine list. Nobody wants to pick a bottle. And the same thing is, think cocktails and spirits wine used to be such a small, you know, world has now exploded and everybody, nobody wants to ask the bartender a question. Nobody wants to seem silly in front of their colleagues, spouse, significant other, right? And we're afraid to ask. So, we don't. And we just continue to drink things that we don't like because we're afraid that somebody's gonna actually ask us about it.

So again, I think something like Pappy Van Winkle is kind of a safe bet, right? We cling to things. We think older has gotta be better, right? If a whiskey is older than a younger one, it's got to be better, right? If it's more expensive, it's got to be better. And unfortunately, neither one of those things is not necessarily true. Like, you know, you're, you know, more expensive, you're paying for rarity as whiskey ages, it evaporates, right? So, it's called the angel share. So literally, you know, the producers getting every year, fewer and fewer bottles out of that barrel. So, what you're paying for is warehousing security, all types of taxation considerations that have nothing to do with whether or not you will like the whiskey more than a less expensive whiskey, right? And I've tried brands, their whiskies are 30, 40 years old, and I actually prefer their 18 year old whiskey, right?

SM:

Yep. Yep.

NR:

And again, we cling to these guard rails because we don't have any others. So, sort of terrifying, I know probably some of your listeners that to take those rules away or supposed rules. It's like jumping in the deep end. But the good news is, is that like, look, I think people should drink what they truly enjoy. No matter that they want to enjoy it. Right? Like if somebody is telling you, can't add ice, club soda or ginger ale, go to a different bar. Like don't drink with those people. Like find different friends. Right? That's not okay. Right? Like you should drink it however you want. Right. Um, and also, you know, you gotta try stuff, right? You gotta find a place where you can go and try different whiskeys and see what appeals to you, right? I mean, that's the fun news.

SM:

That's a great way to describe it. Before I have some what I call fun questions.

NR:

Alright.

SM:

Hopefully all of this is fun. But before I do that, would you, I don't want to go through all the subjects here because there's so much and I really, really, really want people to go buy this book. It's out there now, and it's such a great book. So, I want people to go and buy them. They can read about Japanese whiskey there. And I love the fact that throughout this they can go to England or they could go to, you know, anywhere that produces whiskey anywhere in the world. And I think that is amazing.

But what I would love to find out about is India.

NR:

Yeah.

SM:

Because when I first went to India with my father in the 70s and 80s, they'd poured me a little drop of whiskey and it was made when it was, there wasn't any, what's the word? You couldn't bring any whiskey in.

NR:

Right, no import, yeah.

SM:

So yeah, and now we're beginning to get Paul John and other whiskies. And so, I'd love to find out what India is doing just because.

NR:

Yeah, no it I think it's fascinating and to be honest, you know, one of the chapters in the book is about a lot of places that are like starting to become whiskey producers like, you know major ones, right? So, places like Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, right? I mean people have made whiskies in these places, you know sort of as one-offs or you know as small scale but now they're becoming major players so, I'm actually, in future editions, knock on wood that there are ones of The Whiskey Bible. We will need separate chapters about some of these places, countries, regions, India. Absolutely. Right. I mean, it's almost to the point where I almost like was debating whether or not it needed its own chapter because as you're right, like up until fairly recently, the tariffs to import whiskey were very high. You could do it with bulk shipments and like while before I guess I misspoke because I said, everybody agrees that whiskey is water, grain and yeast in the barrel. In India, sometimes they're also adding cane spirit, right? So, alcohol made from like essentially cane, so like rum, right?

So, you the one thing that William Howard Taft and also the Royal Commission decided at the turn of the century, the one thing that we all could agree about whiskey was that it had to be being from grain, not molasses and even Scotland, there was a tradition in 1800s of people using molasses, which really blew my mind when I found those records, I was like, wait, what?

But people were using molasses to make Scotch a certain point. That was outlawed basically in most of the world at the turn of the century. But in India, like, sort of very value, very, you know, affordable whiskeys in quotes, were made. It was a blend of cane spirit with whiskey, right, and a lot of brands are still like that. And they're very, very affordable. But over the last you know 20 years, 25 years we've also now seen, this like exponential growth in high quality whiskeys from India that are making their whiskeys completely from grain. And a lot of it is both for domestic consumption but also export. And, and, I, you know, I've been writing about drinks now for about 25 years. I remember when Amrut, you know, which was the first like serious Indian whisky came out at first people were like very dubious, right? They treated it kind of like a novelty. Same thing with Japanese whisky, right? People were like, you know, oddly like offended it somehow like was it so stupid that like, you know, that only we could make, you know, whiskey in America where the Scots are, the Irish, right? And then other people making whiskey was somehow offensive. And it's like, why? Right? Like, you know, it was sort of absurd. And then it was also this idea that they couldn't make it because what they would make would be really bad.

And then Amrut came and it blew everybody's minds because it was so amazingly good. Right. And people suddenly were like, where's this from? Like, and it went from being like incredulous and dubious to now suddenly like very, very curious. And like some of these things suddenly became very hard to buy, right? Because of demand spiked.

And we've seen that again and again, you know, whether it's we're talking about Japanese whisky, you know, or the stuff from Australia and New Zealand where people, you know, at first were kind of hard to win over. And now I think the success of Indian whisky has broken down that barrier. And now where you have people who are making whiskey in places that traditionally didn't make whiskey. Now people are kind of like treat them with delight and curiosity, which is kind of a wonderful thing. And I really think that that's a great. We owe the Indian whisky producers a great debt of gratitude for doing that because they broke down those barriers for folks around the world because they showed once and for all, you can make whisky, wonderful whisky anywhere, right? It really has to do with the distiller and the wonder talent, the distillery, the commitment to quality, right? It has, it does not need to be made in the US, Canada, Ireland and Scotland could be made anywhere in the world. You can make really great whiskey. And that's I think one of the most exciting things for myself is just to see where this goes. Right. And in India, I mean, you have all these producers, a lot of them are in Goa, which I've not been, but sounds incredibly beautiful.

SM:

Yeah, it is very beautiful.

NR:

And, um, oh, and, and, it's, you know, you know, that's, you know, again, all of these different environments, climates, they all like, you know, require different, slightly different techniques and methods to making whiskey. But that's the wonderful thing about whiskey is that it adapts, right? It changes and mutates. It's constantly changing, right? It's always evolving. And, you know, it's an amazing thing to see where it goes in places that have different environments and what that means for aging, what that means for flavor, like, you know, what that means for fermentation. All of these things are affected by the, the climates and the, you know, the environment that it's being made in and truly reflects that the Indian whiskey is, is no joke. I mean, if your listeners have not tried it and they are whiskey drinkers, they definitely should check out Amrut and Paul John.

SM:

Yep, of course.

NR:

And now there are other ones that are coming and the domestic, you know, market in India, Southeast Asia all over for cocktails and spirits has just exploded, right.

SM:

Yeah.

NR:

There's an India bartender week I mean all these amazing bars. I met a woman at Tales of the Cocktail. She has a cocktail bar at Kathmandu. I was like, are you kidding me? Like this is incredible like, you know that, that you know, the, the, the rebirth of the cocktail has truly I feel like gone around the world, right? I mean you and I have been around long enough where it was hard to get a good cocktail, like a good Manhattan in Manhattan, right? Like let alone in Kathmandu, right? So, like the fact that like you have craft cocktail bars now in so many places around the world, it's just, it's hard for me to imagine.

SM:

So, for me that would be the great place to end this but I want you to describe again and I want everyone to buy this book. So, please, please, please go out and buy it it's called The Whiskey Bible: A Complete Guide to the World's Greatest Spirit. But I want you to describe again what you said earlier about everyone how they could drink whiskey in the way they want and that to me would be the perfect end.

And then I'm going to ask you some fun questions as well.

NR:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think if people take one thing away from this interview or this 600-pound doorstop of a book, The Whiskey Bible, is that that they really should feel empowered to drink whiskey any way that they enjoy in the manner that they enjoy. Right. So, whether that means you want to mix your Macallan with Mountain Dew, do it. Right. I mean, I mean, whether Simon and I will drink our whiskey that way, completely irrelevant, right? But again, you should drink what you want in the way that you want, right? And don't let anybody stop you.

SM:

Fantastic.

If Noah was a drink, what would it be?

NR:

I mean, I would like to say that I would be a Manhattan. I am a New Yorker as is the Manhattan, right? Manhattan's a delicious, sophisticated, elegant drink. I would like to hope to be as cool as the Manhattan and sophisticated as that cocktail. Probably still have a ways to go to match it, but that would be the dream.

SM:

Fantastic. Okay. Here's the second one. I love this question.

NR:

Okay.

SM:

If Noah had to go back in time for any drink, where and what would that be?

NR:

I mean, I, to be honest, I would love to go back in time to meet with some of those distillers, in the sort of original golden age of whiskey, like folks like E. H. Taylor. You know, we see that name on a lot of, you know, the different whiskies. There's one now named for him, but he was really a pioneer of the way that we make whiskey today. We briefly touched upon Pappy Van Winkle. It would actually be great to go back to meet Julian Van Winkle when he was running the Old Fitzgerald Distillery, the Stitzel Weller Distillery, right? I have so many questions for him that I, you know. . .

SM:

Well, you have to pick one. You have to pick one.

NR:

. . . still have trouble. Oh man. All right. I would go with E. H. Taylor and then, and then hopefully E. H. Taylor would maybe know some of the answers to my other questions.

SM:

Fantastic and here's a one that I love. If Noah had to go back in time to see the invention of anything, what would it be?

NR:

I mean, as, as weird as it sounds, I already have an answer for this.

SM:

Good.

NR:

I for I went one of the big kind of rabbit holes and went down for this book is about the three chamber still, which was a still that was created in America, that finally allowed Americans to create a whiskey separate distinct from what they were using in Ireland and Scotland. My friend Todd Leopold operates the only one in the world right now at his distillery in Denver that he runs with his brother, Leopold Brothers. Todd made me rethink everything I knew about American whiskey because of the three chamber still. But one of the things that we still can't really find is like who patented the first one, right? Like who went from a wooden log still or a wooden chamber still into that kind of three chamber still. So, it'd be amazing to find that person and that company who was the one that really popularized the three chamber still.

SM:

That’s fantastic answers to those questions. So, thank you very much. And finally, before we turn, we go into other things. What are your social media sites? And also, you know, your site for going in to buy the book and all of that.

NR:

Yeah. I am most active on Instagram. It's Noah underscore Rothbaum is my account. I'm always happy to hear from folks with questions, comments, refund requests for the book. Happy to answer any and all questions there. You know, the book is widely available online, booksellers, brick and mortar booksellers. So, wherever you like to buy books, they should be able to get you a copy of The Whiskey Bible.

SM:

And that's called “The Whiskey Bible: A Complete Guide to the World's Greatest Spirit.” Fantastic. Thank you very much. Now that has been an amazing, you know, I had so many more questions to ask you.

NR:

[Laughter]

SM:

But it’s you talking about it is so great and your knowledge of it is just so fantastic. So, I just want to say a real big thank you to you.

NR:

Thank you so much for having me on I enjoyed this so much. Happy to come on for part two, three, four and five if you want to go down those rabbit holes.

SM:

Anytime.

OUTRO MUSIC

SM:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. There is also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

And, if you like what you hear, please don’t forget to join us on Patreon, subscribe, recommend us to your family and friends and give us a good rating on your favorite podcast provider.

Thank you and goodbye from me, Simon Majumdar, and we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.”

[Ring sound]

We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help both with the editing of the transcripts and essential help with the research.