Veggies in the Distillery: These Aren’t Your Garden-Variety Spirits

Where there’s sugar, there can be fermentation and distillation, and there are many sources of sugar in the world. Grains, fruits, sugarcane, and agave provide the stuff for many of the world’s most popular spirits, but vegetables—including tubers and roots—also have a long history of being distilled into alcohol.

That shouldn’t be a surprise. Fermentation is an ancient form of preserving produce, and—while we’re not saying that kimchi spirits are the next big thing—distillation often follows in fermentation’s footsteps.

Wherever cassava is a staple food, for example, people also tend to make beer with it. Also known as manioc or yuca, the starchy root is highly perishable once pulled from the ground, but there are many ways to process it—such as by making flour, which can then be used to make bread, pasta, or beer. It should be no surprise, then, that there are cassava spirits in places as disparate as Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Rwanda, and Texas.