The Weirdest Alcoholic Beverages on the Planet

What’s Your Poison?

Spoiler alert. This column is not for the squeamish. It’s about the weirdest alcoholic beverages on the planet. Are you bored with Chardonnay? Fed up with Cabernet? Is your palate so jaded you’re looking for a new taste experience?

Well, here are some drinks you won’t find in your local liquor store.

Spruce beer: made with the tender shoots of spruce fir trees. A favourite tipple of the under classes in 18th century Lower Canada and prepared on the ships of Captain Cook’s sea voyages to protect his crew against scurvy. No doubt, the Retsina of beers.

Spruce wine: the trees are tapped in mid-March like maples and the sap is collected, heated with sugar, yeast and lemons and left to ferment for five days. Winemakers in Sweden swear it has the flavour of ‘citrus, some sour dough bread and nuts, with a long, slightly nutty balanced aftertaste of forest, fungus, herbs and apples.’ Serve with pine nuts.

Snake wine: When I was in China last year I saw many bottles of wine with whole snakes coiled inside. First documented in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BCE), this disturbing beverage, infused with snakes or sometimes scorpions, was believed to reinvigorate a sick person, according to traditional Chinese medicine. The snakes I was told were poisonous but then the alcohol kills all germs and renders the snake venom harmless. However, a case was recently reported of a woman in northern China who was hospitalized when a hardy snake that had survived its preservation in rice wine slithered out of the bottle and bit her hand.

Thai whiskey: Distilled from rice, the spirit is then put in a large clay pot and infused with reindeer antlers, ginseng roots and other medicinal herbs. Reindeer antlers are believed to make men more potent. Those who have tried it say its taste has a ‘rich earthy finish with a woody aroma’, and a slight ‘sweet taste with a hint of licorice.’

Tezhi Sanbian Jiu: Then there is a rice wine-based concoction called in Cantonese, Tezhi Sanbian Jiu. The English translation is roughly, ‘Three-Penis Liquor.’ If you want to make this at home, take one seal penis, one deer penis and one dog penis and brew with rice wine. Or, if your local market is out of these ingredients, try the Carrefour supermarket in Shanghai. Apparently, it’s more effective than Cialis.

Mice wine: In rural Korea they make a health tonic by fermenting two or three-day-old mice in rice wine. They are left to infuse for a year before consuming. The resulting beverage, apparently good for asthma, is said to taste rather like gasoline – which speaks to aged Riesling in my book.

Seagull wine: The Inuit invented this remarkable beverage. Take a dead seagull, put it in a bottle, fill the bottle with water and leave in the sun till the seagull is fermented. A courageous (or crazy) journalist, Suzanne Donahue, who tried it, described it in these terms: ‘If you opened up a Toyota’s carburetor and drank the leftover fluid from inside, that would be pretty close. It goes down hard and settles in even worse. But I must say it sure gets people inebriated in a hurry. And the next day’s hangover is nothing short of spectacular. You’ll feel like you’ve been repeatedly beaten over the head by a giant…well, seagull.’

Sourtoe Cocktail: And finally there’s the Yukon’s ‘Sourtoe Cocktail’, signature drink of the Downtown Hotel in Dawson City – an actual wizened human toe in a glass of Yukon Jack whisky. In order to join the Sourtoe Cocktail Club you have to ensure that the toe touches your lips. If you inadvertently swallow it there’s a $2,500 fine. But you do get a certificate.

Now, don’t you feel like you could go for a cool, crisp glass of Sauvignon Blanc - free of animal or human infusions?