Empire of Booze cover art

Empire of Booze

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Empire of Booze

By: Henry Jeffreys
Narrated by: David Thorpe
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About this listen

From renowned booze correspondent Henry Jeffreys comes this rich and full-bodied history of Britain and the Empire, told through the improbable but true stories of how the world’s favourite alcoholic drinks came to be.

Learn how we owe the champagne we drink today to 17th-century methods for making sparkling cider; how madeira and India Pale Ale became legendary for their ability to withstand the long, hot journeys to Britain’s burgeoning overseas territories; and why whisky became the familiar choice for weary Empire builders who longed for home.

Jeffreys traces the impact of alcohol on British culture and society: literature, science, philosophy and even religion have reflections in the bottom of a glass.

©2016 Henry Jeffreys (P)2018 Isis Publishing Ltd Food & Wine Wine & Beverages World British Empire Imperialism Africa United Kingdom

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All stars
Most relevant  
The titled lured me in and the occasional brilliant nugget of information or anecdote kept me listening. I would like to have heard more history and less this grape and that grape wine snobbery fired off in rapid succession between wholly redundant statistics of what wine merchant had what percentage of what market cornered a hundred years ago.

However, the narrator was pleasant enough and the hours wound on. Occasionally he would imitate a foreign accent when reading a quote. I suppose he went for immersion but executed so poorly it grated on the ears to a degree where it become hard to focus on the actual quote.

The r

A flawed but partly entertaining triviality

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