Monday, November 2, 2020

Wikipedia Trail: From List of Alcoholic Drinks to Flavoured Liquor

The article that I started at was "List of Alcoholic Drinks", which I'd found while looking for different types of alcohol for my story characters to drink. I wanted them each to have something that stood out from the others, hence the research direction for this trail.

The article covered both fermented and distilled drinks and included a variety of sections to help sort the information in ways that could be useful. The first section sorted them by the specific raw material used to create them. It had the expected grains and fruits, but also things like walnuts, sugar, palm sap and honey. The next two sections covered fermented and distilled drinks respectively, and sorted them by type and/or category.

My next stop was "List of Cocktails", which was really interesting.

The article included links to a massive variety of cocktails sorted by their primary alcoholic ingredient, such as beer, gin, rum, vodka and whiskey. It also had a section sorting cocktails by their primary mixer, which is used to provide a significant degree of the cocktail's flavor. The sheer number of cocktails covered on the article was mind-boggling, especially since many of the categories had links to larger lists of cocktails using that particular ingredient.

After that, I ended up on "List of Liqueurs", because liqueur was an unfamiliar term to me that was a category on the previous page.

What I learned was that liqueurs are alcoholic beverages that are bottled with added sugar and added flavors that are usually based from fruits, herbs or nuts. They typically are between 15-55% alcohol. Common flavors include fruit, chocolate, cream, crème, herbs and flowers.

My ending destination was "Flavored Liquor", since I noted that in the previous article it said the two were different, and I was curious about why.

These are quite similar to liqueurs, but differ in that while they do contain added flavors, they do not have any added sugar or glycerin. The alcoholic base for flavored liquors are typically rice wines, rums, tequilas and vodkas, though there are a few other types of flavored liquors that exist outside those main groups. Vodka and white rum are among the most common choices for flavored liquors due to having minimal taste of their own, allowing them to be infused with a greater variety of flavors.

A selection of flavored vodkas (Source)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Wikipedia Trail: From Church Grim to Raijū

For this wiki trail, I began at the article on the " Church Grim ", since I was researching mythological canines to determine whic...