Cask Strength: The Story of the Barrel, the Secret Ingredient in Your Drink

by Mike Gerrard

The story of the unsung hero of the world of spirits, wine, and beer and an invention as ancient and important as the wheel—the humble barrel.

Without the barrel, we would have no bourbon, no oak-aged chardonnay, no barrel-aged stouts . . . and no tabasco sauce, either.  From its first use by the Ancient Egyptians, the barrel has left an unmistakable imprint on human history. The Romans used it in all corners of their vast empire, and explorers could not have charted the globe or opened up trade routes without them to store their food and water. And in all its thousands of years of use, the barrel’s basic design has barely changed at all—a testament to its sheer and simple perfection.

Cask Strength is more than a history book. In it, Mike Gerrard, an award-winning travel and drinks writer, investigates the making, buying, and selling of barrels and details how drinks like wine, tequila, rum, cognac, and others are enhanced by specific kinds of barrel production. Modern distillers, brewers, and wine-makers continue to use them in new, creative ways—with the barrel providing up to 60-70% of their flavors. 

Gerrard’s expertise and palpable passion for beverages will ignite the curiosities of booze fans and history buffs alike as Cask Strength traces the simple splendor of the barrel.

• ISBN10: 1637742975
• ISBN13: 9781637742976
• Publish Date: 11 July 2023
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Matt Holt Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 240
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781637742976

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

Solid Look At History, Current Uses, and Future Of The Barrel. At just 240 pages or so - and just 14% or so of that bibliography, which is where the single star deduction comes in - this is far from a truly in-depth look at the topic. But as kind of a "Barrel 101", this book really works. The majority of the text focuses on the various current uses of barrels, mostly dealing with the various forms of alcohol stored in them - everything from liquors to wines to even beers - but also delving into even, surprisingly, hot sauce. Shorter sections deal with the millenia-old history of the barrel and with its most modern incarnations and looking to what the future might hold for the technology.

Indeed, for what it is, the only truly glaring weakness here is in fact the dearth of a bibliography, clocking in at just about 14% of the overall text, when 20-30% is more typical in my extensive experience with nonfiction Advance Reviewer Copies.

Overall a quick, fun, and informative read that will give you yet more esoteric knowledge and trivia and thus expand your horizons just that much more. Very much recommended.