No decent Pan-worshiping pagan’s kitchen shelf would be complete without this thorough guide to creating 236 delicious, exotic beverages. The book covers the history and customs of early drinks, including religious and medicinal usages. This excellent investigation into beers, cordials, aperitifs, liquors, meads, punches and other odd brews will have you running to the store for fermenting supplies, pronto. Full recipes for beet wine, onion wine, rhubarb wine, soda pop, beers, long-forgotten teas and decadent cordials are all given here, plus many more. Why settle for merely reading The Pickwick Papers or Boswell’s Life of Johnson when you can giddily brew the authentic, antiquated drinks from the shadowy past described in these books and enjoy them in the blinding present. Cheers! (Hic!) CS

Publisher: Llewellyn
Paperback: 272 pages
Illustrated