I like rum!

[Susa the Great]

OK, now let's try it Sober (had to edit the original post)

Hello people,

I was searching for a Mojito receipe today morning (if you don't know what a Mojito is, it is a drink prepared with white Cuban rum, Brazilians have it in the morning instead of milk Sorry, joking ), and I came across an article stating that Alexander found sugar cane in India, and the article quotes (Nearchos' words): "grass that gives honey without bees", what makes one wonder (meaning the article's author) if he's found out about rum as well (something like Mojito, coz of the 'honey' thing I suppose )

So --- Alexander had rum?

But really, I never heard anything like that before about him. And, well, I heard a LOT about him (even long ago, when someone here mentioned that he might have been a woman).

OK, sharing the etilical morning experience I had with good ol' Alex.

[agesilaos]

Rum is great, though I prefer the dark stuff, naval background dontchaknow, but I am pretty sure the ancients understood brewing but not distillation, so no rum for Alexander... plenty of buggery and the lash, though.

[athenas owl]

Hello! I like rum, too!

The "grass that gives honey without bees"....I remember reading that. Even though spirits weren't distilled yet, I wonder if the Indians made a kind of "mead" equivalent?

Somewhere back in the aisles of my mental inventory, I recall reading several years ago that there was possibly some evidence that folks up on the North Sea?Rhine? region may have been distilling as early as 2000 years ago. Something about juniper berries...a Frisian Martini perhaps.

Back to the sugarcane described by the Greeks....If memory serves, sugar really didn't get introduced to Europe until over a 1000 years later, through Arab diffusion...I've always wondered why it didn't follow the Greeks back earlier.

[Susa the Great]

Hello athenas owl,

Mm, mead!

Yep, seems that Marco Polo got some fermented beverage from sugar cane when in Persia, according to wiki. Known as "brum" in Malaysia.

And, yes, I also checked distilling processes, and it did exist in a very rudimentar way, I think, in Asia and other places, cant remember now... Well, I always think that technology as we know must have started some way.

Soo -- I really can have this mental picture of Alexander asking at some point: "WHY is the rum gone?!"

[amyntoros]

Just found this today in my mailbox.

Rum punch is an ancient libation. As drinks historian David Wondrich notes in his book "Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl", excavations in what is now Pakistan uncovered “remains of what were unmistakably distillery-grogshop complexes...These have been dated to the time of Christ, give or take a century or two. Combine them with the sugarcane that Alexander the Great found growing in the same region, and the long-standing domestication of the lime in India, and it’s not impossible that Rum Punch could be two thousand years old.”

Hmmm. So it's possible that Alexander was served rum during his travels through India.

Best regards,

[agesilaos]

Only if he dodged the bullet in Babylon and went East to hibernate in Tibet, say, for a hundred odd years! Bit suspicious of the 'give or take two centuries' get the Time team down there.

[Susa the Great]

Totally possible!

A primitive rum.

And now with this finding in Pakistan! That's terrific.

STG