From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman and you're listening to Good Food.

I know many of us are drinking less these days, but there is still that instinct to bring a bottle to the holiday party or table, and no wonder.

Just as food has its place in history and cultural traditions, so do beverages.

Author and food scholar Dara Goldstein has teamed up with Courtney Burns and Richard Martin

for a series of books on preservation.

Their volume on drinks catalogs how early alcoholic fermentations were offered to deities,

later becoming rituals of fraternity, and continuing to serve in medicinal

use and festivities. Hi, Dara. Hi, Evan. It's so good to hear your voice again. I'm really excited

about this little volume. It was really fun to work on. It took us in all kinds of strange directions that we didn't necessarily anticipate.

And I think what I really love about this one is that we really did travel the world to find unusual beverages from lots of different countries.

Could you talk a bit about the historical role of fermented beverages in times of celebration

and mourning?

Yes.

People have been making alcoholic beverages for centuries, dating back to antiquity and even earlier in China.

And they did it by fermenting grains. And because it was such an involved process and also because

the resulting alcohol, which you get from distilled liquor, made people feel very

heady and liberated and kind of wild, it became closely associated with the gods and with

rituals.

We need only think about Bacchus, you know, and how he's always portrayed with grapes.

But the earlier beverages were done with grains, particularly barley and also rice in China. And in Africa, in certain parts of Africa, in many different cultures,

you honor the deceased by pouring an alcoholic beverage onto the ground.

And in a certain way, it's like when wealthy Egyptians were buried with all kinds of food to help carry them to the afterlife.

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