A recent post in our Members' forum (13 years after the last one in the thread!) reminded me that I promised to publish here all the entries on grape-based spirits that we had to drop from the second edition of the Oxford Companion to Wine to make way for all the new wine entries we wanted to add to the third edition. I needed to be reminded of that promise and it gives me great pleasure to honour it – albeit 13 years too late.
The entries below were written for the second edition, published in 1999, by the late Nicholas Faith ('N.F.')...