# The New Craft of the Cocktail ## Metadata * Author: [Dale DeGroff and Daniel Krieger](https://www.amazon.comundefined) * ASIN: B082ZQQD8X * ISBN: 1984823574 * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082ZQQD8X * [Kindle link](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B082ZQQD8X) ## Highlights Rum production in the New World was sort of an accident. On his second voyage (1493–96), Christopher Columbus introduced sugarcane to the Western Hemisphere with the idea of creating lucrative sugar plantations. The Portuguese became the largest cane growers in the New World in the South American colony that is today known as Brazil. Rum was made by the ever-industrious colonists as a way to utilize molasses left over from sugar production. There was also a darker purpose: to subdue the slave population working in the cane fields. At — location: [171](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B082ZQQD8X&location=171) ^ref-4184 --- the end of the seventeenth century, rum production in the British colonies dwarfed sugar production, leading the British to enact laws requiring a certain proportion of sugarcane crop to be used to make sugar. — location: [174](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B082ZQQD8X&location=174) ^ref-13798 --- Alexander Hamilton, our first secretary of the Treasury, decided to pay our war debts quickly by way of a federal excise tax on spirits. The tax was universally unpopular, but President Washington and the Congress, wishing to support a major initiative by Secretary Hamilton, passed the bill, and in 1791, it was signed into law. — location: [187](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B082ZQQD8X&location=187) ^ref-33424 --- The British blockaded our coastline as they had done in the Revolutionary War, cutting off trade again with molasses producers in the Caribbean and all but finishing the dwindling rum production. This led to a tidal increase in the domestic production of grain spirits and eventually to the birth of the great American spirit, bourbon. — location: [192](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B082ZQQD8X&location=192) ^ref-16425 --- our first clear distinction of what constitutes a cocktail and separates it from all the concoctions that came before: the addition of bitters. — location: [204](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B082ZQQD8X&location=204) ^ref-3396 --- Bitters is a generic term that refers to both beverage and nonbeverage preparations, mostly alcohol-based and flavored with botanicals. — location: [205](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B082ZQQD8X&location=205) ^ref-45203 --- After America’s molasses supplies were cut off during two wars with the British, the transition from rum to whiskey as the most popular alcoholic beverage was well underway. — location: [233](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B082ZQQD8X&location=233) ^ref-22953 --- The name bourbon comes from the House of Bourbon, the — location: [252](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B082ZQQD8X&location=252) ^ref-10101 --- ruling house in France from 1589 to 1792, and was a tribute to France for supporting the United States through the Revolutionary War. — location: [252](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B082ZQQD8X&location=252) ^ref-47844 ---