Alcoholic Beverages
It is advisable for the hotel, restaurant or club manager to keep his service personnel well-informed. After all, they are his sales staff and they cannot be expected to increase the sale of beverages if they are not familiar with them. This applies equally to the wholesaler or distributor. The sales staff which is trained and can give information will become salesmen instead of order takers.
While the Guide has been designed primarily to be of use to the trade, it is the author’s earnest hope that it will be read by the most important person to the entire industry-the consumer. It is to please and serve him that the industry constantly strives. A greater familiarity with the beverages which are discussed in detail in this book would, we believe, not only aid him in purchasing with assurance, but would, perhaps, point out to him many intriguing qualities which he may have overlooked, and therefore increase his enjoyment.
To provide the reader with practical information, to increase his knowledge and enjoyment, and above all, to impart something of the fascination of the subject is the purpose of this Guide.
It is important to explain what we mean by the various terms we use, so that there may be no misconceptions.
What is Alcohol
Alcohol is a volatile, colorless liquid with an ethereal odor, obtained through the fermentation of a sugar-containing liquid. There are many members of the alcohol family, but, as Al Smith is the best-known Smith, so ethyl is the bestknown alcohol and the one which concerns us most, as it is the principal alcohol to be found in all alcoholic beverages. Chemically, alcohols are hydroxides of organic radicals. There is nothing in alcohol which, in itself, is poisonous or injurious to man’s health.
What is an Alcoholic Beverage
Literally, any potable liquid containing from liz of 1 per cent up to 75l1z per cent of ethyl alcohol by volume is an alcoholic beverage. However, social and economic factors enter the picture, and we find that, for the purposes of taxation, the Federal and several State Governments have set certain definite standards as to what constitutes an alcoholic beverage. Whereas beers containing as little as 2 per cent of alcohol by volume are taxable, certain bitters and medicinal compounds, which often contain upwards of 40 per cent, are not taxed because they are not considered alcoholic beverages in the tax sense. In 1919 the Congress of the United States established by law that an alcoholic beverage containing more than Y2 of 1 per cent of alcohol by volume was intoxicating, yet in later years, liqueurs containing 12 per cent of alcohol by volume were permitted to be sold as “non-alcoholic” cordials. One might draw the conclusion that, by 1930, 12 per cent of alcohol in a liqueur was not as intoxicating as 1 per cent was in beer.
What is Wine
Wine is the naturally fermented juice of freshly gathered ripe grapes, which have been pressed at or near the place where gathered. The Federal Alcohol Administration’s regulations, however, give a broader use to the term and say that it may be applied to the fermented juice of other fruits, or even herbs, such as blackberry, elderberry, peach, and dandelion wines. Wine is more than just water and alcohol. The Bible calls it the blood of the grape. Wine is a living thing in a constant state of change.
What is a Spirit
A spirit is a potable alcoholic beverage obtained from the distillation of an alcohol-containing liquid. It makes very little difference whether the original liquid contained a small or a large amount of alcohol. Once the principles of distillation are applied, nearly all of the alcohol may be separated from the liquid. In this process, however, it is inevitable that certain other matters will also be separated and it is these congeners, which we may call impurities, that give the several spirits their distinct character after the spirit has been matured in wood and the congeners, or impurities, have fully developed.
What is Beer
Beer is a liquor fermented from cereals and malt, flavored with hops.
The leaders of the industry are unanimous in preferring that more people drink and enjoy beverages, rather than that the individual drink more. 
One of the leading Champagne shippers illustrated this point when he told me: “When I ship my wine, my name appears on the label. It is I who guarantee the quality. My reputation is more important to me than any pecuniary profit I may derive from the sale. It took my forebears 200 years to establish this reputation for shipping wines of quality, and rest assured that I am going to pass on as good a name to my successors as I received.” It is men of this type who have placed the wine and spirit trade on the high plane which has become traditional.
The beginnings of the liquor industry are lost in the mazes of the past, almost as old as man himself, and our knowledge of it is made up of widely scattered information from the dawn of time in every language written or spoken. The entire subject lacks finality. It is continually developing and consequently is always intriguing. Like living things, it is subject to growth and fluctuations, and in that fact lies, perhaps, its chief fascination.