The Dallas-Fort Worth area has a large South Asian population. Jumping between grocery stores, bakeries, and restaurants there are plenty of Indian drinks available, especially ones made with dairy. There is chaas and lassi, yogurt drink and masala buttermilk. Each of these drinks tastes entirely unique.
Drinking alcoholic horse’s milk is a notable experience. Europeans have been writing home about it since Herodotus started writing history. Koumiss or airag, depending on the language, is an ancient drink that has enabled Central Asian nomads to preserve the nutrition of horse’s milk over many months and vast distances.
No one blinks an eye at the thought of scooping sugar into a cup of tea, but what of the other common pantry powder? Salt was the original addition to tea during China’s Tang Dynasty. The flavoring is even mentioned in the world’s first book on tea. Today, salt is still added to tea in Tibet and Kashmir.
Nearly all traditional Asian alcohols start with a moldy concoction that helps to jump start fermentation. These starters help to convert starch in rice, barley, and other foods into sugar so yeast can perform fermentation. In China, this is qu, in Japan, koji, and in Korea nuruk.
Tapé is an Indonesian delicacy that can be made from rice or cassava. The starchy foods are fermented into a sweet paste that can have an alcoholic content of up to 8% by volume. These boozy snacks are made traditionally, using fermentation starters called ragi which carry mold and yeast.
Modern oenophiles love to read and write about their wine. So how long have people been writing about the vintage? As long as humans have had written language, wine has been a topic. Mesopotamians mentioned wine in contexts of splendor and abundance, even though they were actually beer-drinkers. Wine, of course, is older than writing itself.
Humans have been hunting rhinoceros for their horns for a long time. It turns out, we wanted to drink out of the horn. Cultures from China to Spain, India to Ethiopia, have all carved cups out of rhino horn for its medicinal properties. These cups were luxury items fit for emperors and kings.
In several sections of the Old Testament, a unique practice of the Israelites is mentioned-shouting accompanied the stomping of grapes. This so called “vintage-shout” is described in various ways. The shout was sometimes violent, accentuating the damage done to grapes. Usually, it was joyous, celebrating the fruit of many months of labor. In the Holy Land, the wine making process was loud.
Many species of orchids have two bulbs. One can be dried and ground into a powder called salep. In Turkey, this powder is used to make a thick, hot beverage in the winter and ice cream in the summer. Many believed that the orchid had medicinal and aphrodisiacal powers, so the powder and drink have long been coveted. Over-harvesting orchids has threatened some species, so substitutes are common.
As tea was farmed and dried in the mountains of Southern China, it was shipped out on long, difficult journeys to the west towards India and the east towards Beijing. It would arrive in large cities in the teapots of sophisticated and influential households at the end of its journey, but on the way, exposure to time, the elements, and perhaps the sweat of pack animals transformed the tea. When a long leaf variety from the Camellia sinensis var. assamica plant was subjected to these conditions, the buyers found the flavor to be exquisite. Pu erh was born.
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