Welcome to The Other Drink

Finding new tastes in drinks.

Hi everyone.

I’ll be honest from the start: I don’t really like writing. But I’ve always believed a good story and a bit of history deserve to be passed around, and the ones I keep bumping into aren’t getting told. So I’m going to try anyway. I’d rather do something than nothing at all.

Here’s the thing. The moment you’re not having the wine at the restaurant or the beer at the pub, the drink becomes a bit of an afterthought. Everyone else gets a proper choice. You get the same soft drinks you’ve already seen in a million other places, or water, for your health. But alcohol was never really the point. The point is the drink in your hand, the taste, the ritual, the evening you’re having. And once you start looking past the booze, there’s a whole world back there, with more range and more surprises than anything with alcohol in it.

So that’s what The Other Drink is. An exploration, and I’d like you to come along. Part of it is the history, where these drinks come from, why the interesting stuff never makes the menu, what people drank before and beyond alcohol. Part of it is the makers, the small producers fermenting, pressing, and brewing things you’ve never heard of. And part of it is simpler, and a little selfish. I’m hunting for tastes I’ve never had, and I want to find them with you.

I don’t have it all figured out yet. That’s kind of the point. We work it out one glass at a time.

A bit about why it’s me writing this.

I grew up around alcohol my whole life. Surrounded by it, always interested in it, but it was never really in me.

It ran through everything around me. Two of the places I lived were built on old brewery grounds, Tuborg Havn (Tuborg Harbour) and then Carlsberg Byen (Carlsberg City). Even at school it was there: from middle school on, every Christmas the others would talk about drinking nisseøl, a sweet Christmas beer with only about one and a half to two percent alcohol in it, named after the nisse, a mischievous little house spirit from Danish folklore. I tried it too, and it was never for me.

In the end it reached my work as well, when I took a job in a wine cellar. For years I lived with it. Every chance I got, I’d try every beer, every wine. Nothing ever really hit the right spot. I kept thinking I’d grow into the taste one day, the way you’re supposed to, but I never did. So now I’m looking for those flavours somewhere else.

I hope you love finding a new taste as much as I do. Now let’s go and find some.

Andrei