The “Wonk” in Cocktail Wonk refers to digging deep to understand as much as possible about spirits and cocktails. Many of the stories here involve the chemistry of aging, as well as the different elements in a spirit – water, ethanol, and other compounds such as esters, aldehydes and higher (heavier) alcohols. It’s these compounds that give spirits their aroma flavor. Each spirit has its own ratios of these compounds, thus making that spirit taste different than any other spirit. The set of aromatic compounds in a spirit are impacted by many processes, including fermentation, distillation, and barrel aging.
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American Rum Done Right: Privateer’s Maggie Campbell Sets the Bar
Maggie Campbell glances at the clock again, then toward the still. Even from twenty feet away, she knows the thin stream of still-warm rum coming off it is the “hearts” – ethanol, aka “the good alcohol” that we drink. She frowns a bit. Normally this is the raison d’etre of a distiller’s day, but for some reason, this distillation is taking far longer than she’d estimated when we began hours ago. In the hours since we started, Maggie has done the near-impossible – answered every single one of my wonky questions about every aspect of Privateer Rum’s production process, from cane sourcing to distilling to bottling. I’ve literally run out of questions to ask – a first for me.
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