7 ms·

I disagree with Hungary is in a Wine-Beer belt. Although Beer is in par with wine, the spirits (pálinka) is very significant. In the region I born, in every hou

by aries1980 7y ago

I disagree with Hungary is in a Wine-Beer belt. Although Beer is in par with wine, the spirits (pálinka) is very significant. In the region I born, in every household that had some fruits had the argument whether jam or spirits should be made from the fruit. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1linka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1linka https://welovebudapest.com/en/2015/02/20/19-signs-you-learned-to-drink-in-hungary/ https://welovebudapest.com/en/2015/02/20/19-signs-you-learne...

babuskov 7y ago
Serbia is also not in Wine belt. The traditional drink is rakija - which is the same as pálinka in Hungary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia The "belts" seems like made up thing, bending the actual facts to fit someone's story.
- misterkolaz 7y ago
  Same as Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia or anywhere albanians live. New generations will drink it less and less, and become beer countries as well
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  It says it's a fruit brandy, and traditional brandy is a spirit made by using wine. Things don't neatly separate into three groups, but it's not completely made up.
  - boomskats 7y ago
    > It says it's a fruit brandy, and traditional brandy is a spirit made by using wine This is a really good example of bending actual facts to fit someone's story.
    - boomboomsubban 7y ago
      Brandy is a spirit made out of wine. Fruit brandy just uses things besides grapes. It's not really vodka and it's not really wine. It's not a distortion of facts, it could fall under either designation.
      - babuskov 7y ago
        > Brandy is a spirit made out of wine. Fruit brandy just uses things besides grapes. Not really. "Fruit brandy" that people traditionally make and drink in this region is made directly from fruit, without the vine step. There is a brand of it that's made from vine called "vinjak", but that's not the traditional drink everyone is drinking here. You can also make rakia directly from grapes. That's called "loza" and it hasn't got anything to do with vine.
        boomboomsubban 7y ago
        Yeah, I am grossly oversimplifying things with my definition. For these belts, "wine" is used to describe anything made from fruit. They also mention cider drinking regions of the UK as potentially part of the wine belt. Really there should probably be a fourth belt covering SE Europe, but as these are only used for informal discussion it doesn't really matter.
    - greglindahl 7y ago
      There's a real difference between vodka and brandy: most vodka isn't supposed to taste like anything, while all brandy is supposed to taste like something. Maybe you want to divide things differently, but I don't think you're the one to say what the facts are for everyone.
      - boomskats 7y ago
        Fair point. The cultural value of rakija as an 'aperitif' drink is also quite different to the bingy approach to vodka, even though you could argue that in reality little separates them. Someone else also mentioned the 'fruit-based' vs 'potato based' classification and that's all quite valid, but all it does is show that there should be a fourth category of fruit-based hard liquor on that map.
- paganel 7y ago
  It looks like a made-up thing, because over here in Romania we (meaning the people in the countryside) mostly drink home-made “palinca” (so basically the same thing as the Hungarians) and what we call “tzuica” (a sort of plum brandy). The common people who live in the urban area mostly drink very cheep beer (the kind of beer that you can purchase in 2.5l plastic bottles) and some poorer people drink a thing that is pretty close to rubbing alcohol.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    > some poorer people drink a thing that is pretty close to medicinal alcohol. Or poor Romanians drink very cheap spirits produced by the Prodvinalco company, whose ingredient labels are always good for a laugh. For example, on a bottle showing a pirate that might lead consumers to expect real rum, one finds in small print "Beverage made from alcohol of agricultural origin with rum flavouring". That is, it’s pure grain alcohol with presumably just an eyedropper’s worth of some kind of rum essence.
    - henrikschroder 7y ago
      If you buy Captain Morgan's in the US, you get the same thing, industrially produced ethanol flavoured with rum essence. That's what "Bottled and finished in CA" means. At least Romania has more honest labeling.
      - umanwizard 7y ago
        Do you have a source for this?
        henrikschroder 7y ago
        Captain Morgan, as we're talking about them, have a bunch of different products. Some are 100% Jamaican rum, and they say so on the bottle. Their biggest seller though, Original Spiced Gold is according to themselves "a blend of rum and other spirits". "Other spirits" is an industry euphemism for Grain Neutral Spirits, i.e. industrial alcohol produced using the cheapest base and distilled to 95%, which is something you then buy in bulk. Take a look at these guys, for example: https://ultrapure-usa.com/grain-neutral-spirits-options-signature-spirits/ https://ultrapure-usa.com/grain-neutral-spirits-options-sign... Or take a look at this page: https://ultrapure-usa.com/services-2/spirits-brand-owners/ https://ultrapure-usa.com/services-2/spirits-brand-owners/ Want to launch a Gin company? Rum? Whisky? They're experts at white-labeling! Yes, you have to read between the lines to understand how this works, because none of the large alcohol brands wants consumers to know how their products are actually made, it's all obscured by deceptive labeling. Also, at the end of the day, ethanol is ethanol. The difference between Captain Morgan's Original Spiced Gold and actual Jamaican rum is like the difference between synthetic diamonds and real diamonds. Yes, both are 100% carbon in a diamond lattice with the exact same refraction index and hardness and properties. They sparkle the same, they look the same, only experts can tell the difference, but a lot of people still care about the difference.
- josteink 7y ago
  > The "belts" seems like made up thing, bending the actual facts to fit someone's story. Agreed. As a Norwegian, I can attest Norway is known for its appreciation of fine spirits like scotch and cognac. That said, we’re clearly a beer-country. We make beer, we drink beer, we go out for a beer, and when people come over, we ask if they want a beer. Vodka is only drunk by a smaller niche or Eastern European immigrants. How we could ever be a “vodka nation” beats me. This looks like fiction. Edit: I guess the illegal “moonshine” culture in the northern parts of the country could account for “vodkaism”, but that’s not really a striving culture these days, and definitely not mainstream.
  - iguy 7y ago
    "these days" is key. I think the map is trying to say that maybe 200 years ago, people mostly drank hard alcohol of some sort, not beer or wine. Do you know whether that is accurate? And they've lumped by country borders, too. Could people grow hops in very southern Norway, perhaps?
    - supermatt 7y ago
      They provide no sources for historical consumption. It looks fictional to me. I know there is a lot of fruit wines traditionally in lithuania, for example, but we have been lumped into the "vodka belt"...
  - mongol 7y ago
    Do you have a aquavit / snaps tradition? I think it is likely that Norway, like Sweden, had more emphasis on these spirits traditionally, before 1950 or so.
  - flurdy 7y ago
    Yeah, I am not sure of the Vodka belt for Norway. Though as others mentioned it may be more historic. Sweden does make Absolut though I'm not sure they are Vodka country either. My memory gaps from trips to see friends in Finland has convinced me they are Vodka country though, Koskenkorva and more. The second map where Norway prefer Beer as of 2012 is probably true. I am not quite sure why there are two maps. Though I agree moonshine was quite prevalent when I was young. Gallons of some dodgy near methanol drink bought of some Russian trawler... My Norwegian family does seem to drink a lot of Cognac and occasionally some Aquavit. I would say Norwegian drinking habits are not like other beer countries where they may have 1 or 2 pints a few times a week. It seemed in Norway more like once a month 8 pints or nothing for most... Though they are more cosmopolitan these days.
- iguy 7y ago
  I think that these belts make better sense in the west, than in south-eastern europe, maybe the gradient of climate is more complicated there. The other famous trio are the olive oil/butter/lard belts, which again were fairly clear lines in the west (although obviously things have changed now). Data-points on what fat your grandmother used, in south-eastern europe, anyone?
  - babuskov 7y ago
    If you mean fat usage for cooking, etc. in Serbia it was mainly lard. Olives don't grow here and fat from milk is traditionally used to make "kaymak": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymak
  - riffraff 7y ago
    Italy itself is split between butter (prevalent in the north) and olive oil ( prevalent in the South). Lard, possibly more used in the less coastal more mountainous central areas.
  - zeristor 7y ago
    Supposedly there’s Rapeseed oil / Canola (for the sensitive) in the Baltic’s region
AdrianB1 7y ago
It used to be the same in Romania (we did tuica and palinca, same as pálinka), but lately people drink mostly beer in the summer and wine or spirits in the winter, it is a highly seasonal pattern. Same in Bulgaria, beer is very popular in warm seasons and it has a seasonal pattern.
wozniacki 7y ago
Hungarians invented the wine/soda combination known as fröccs and if you feel qualified to name all the various wine-to-water ratios, then you probably got your degree in alcohol at a Hungarian pub. Are any of the fröccs any good? Do you just add soda to the wine or is there a seltzer style dispenser as shown in the illustration?
- greglindahl 7y ago
  Watering wine is a historical thing dating back to the invention of wine. It makes bad wine taste a lot better. So I'm sure there's plenty of wine for which its fröcc tastes a lot better.
- aries1980 7y ago
  The seitzer style dispenser is the way to dispense the soda to the wine that is already in a normal tumbler or high ball glass. The wine is usually a dry white, e.g. rizling, not top-of-the-line. We have a saying “it's acceptable with soda” for “good enough”, comes from the fröccs. The purpose of adding soda is to make it more refreshing in the Summer and allows to drink more without flipping over. About the ratios: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%B6ccs https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%B6ccs is a good list. bor = wine, szódavíz = carbonated water.
- PappaPatat 7y ago
  > Are any of the fröccs any good? Not as in wine good, but on a warn day, soda and cheap wine taste fine. Same as for these moment (when I was young and piss poor), we'd buy "cooking wine" (cheapest shit on the shelf) and mix that one on one with cola. No matter how bad the wine, you can drink it easily and still get the added "benefit" of the alcohol.
boomboomsubban 7y ago
It depends on whether you call the first belt the "vodka belt" or the "spirits belt." Their definition of the vodka belt is >However, the general definition tends to include the following states as significant producers and consumers of vodka Hungary doesn't fit that definition, and brandy favoring states would be considered part of the wine belt.
MichaelMoser123 7y ago
https://shannon-pub.ru/drugoe/statistika-potrebleniya-piva-v-rossii-i-mire.html https://shannon-pub.ru/drugoe/statistika-potrebleniya-piva-v... here they say that as of 2016 Russians are drinking slightly more beer than vodka. I think such broad generalizations over vast geographical regions are often a bit tainted. Interesting that alcohol consumption is down ten litres from 2014 to 2016, but that might be because the economy isnt doing too well ; starting with the war in Ukraine.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

babuskov 7y ago

Serbia is also not in Wine belt. The traditional drink is rakija - which is the same as pálinka in Hungary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia The "belts" seems like made up thing, bending the actual facts to fit someone's story.

misterkolaz 7y ago
Same as Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia or anywhere albanians live. New generations will drink it less and less, and become beer countries as well
boomboomsubban 7y ago
It says it's a fruit brandy, and traditional brandy is a spirit made by using wine. Things don't neatly separate into three groups, but it's not completely made up.
- boomskats 7y ago
  > It says it's a fruit brandy, and traditional brandy is a spirit made by using wine This is a really good example of bending actual facts to fit someone's story.
  - boomboomsubban 7y ago
    Brandy is a spirit made out of wine. Fruit brandy just uses things besides grapes. It's not really vodka and it's not really wine. It's not a distortion of facts, it could fall under either designation.
    - babuskov 7y ago
      > Brandy is a spirit made out of wine. Fruit brandy just uses things besides grapes. Not really. "Fruit brandy" that people traditionally make and drink in this region is made directly from fruit, without the vine step. There is a brand of it that's made from vine called "vinjak", but that's not the traditional drink everyone is drinking here. You can also make rakia directly from grapes. That's called "loza" and it hasn't got anything to do with vine.
      - boomboomsubban 7y ago
        Yeah, I am grossly oversimplifying things with my definition. For these belts, "wine" is used to describe anything made from fruit. They also mention cider drinking regions of the UK as potentially part of the wine belt. Really there should probably be a fourth belt covering SE Europe, but as these are only used for informal discussion it doesn't really matter.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    There's a real difference between vodka and brandy: most vodka isn't supposed to taste like anything, while all brandy is supposed to taste like something. Maybe you want to divide things differently, but I don't think you're the one to say what the facts are for everyone.
    - boomskats 7y ago
      Fair point. The cultural value of rakija as an 'aperitif' drink is also quite different to the bingy approach to vodka, even though you could argue that in reality little separates them. Someone else also mentioned the 'fruit-based' vs 'potato based' classification and that's all quite valid, but all it does is show that there should be a fourth category of fruit-based hard liquor on that map.
paganel 7y ago
It looks like a made-up thing, because over here in Romania we (meaning the people in the countryside) mostly drink home-made “palinca” (so basically the same thing as the Hungarians) and what we call “tzuica” (a sort of plum brandy). The common people who live in the urban area mostly drink very cheep beer (the kind of beer that you can purchase in 2.5l plastic bottles) and some poorer people drink a thing that is pretty close to rubbing alcohol.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  > some poorer people drink a thing that is pretty close to medicinal alcohol. Or poor Romanians drink very cheap spirits produced by the Prodvinalco company, whose ingredient labels are always good for a laugh. For example, on a bottle showing a pirate that might lead consumers to expect real rum, one finds in small print "Beverage made from alcohol of agricultural origin with rum flavouring". That is, it’s pure grain alcohol with presumably just an eyedropper’s worth of some kind of rum essence.
  - henrikschroder 7y ago
    If you buy Captain Morgan's in the US, you get the same thing, industrially produced ethanol flavoured with rum essence. That's what "Bottled and finished in CA" means. At least Romania has more honest labeling.
    - umanwizard 7y ago
      Do you have a source for this?
      - henrikschroder 7y ago
        Captain Morgan, as we're talking about them, have a bunch of different products. Some are 100% Jamaican rum, and they say so on the bottle. Their biggest seller though, Original Spiced Gold is according to themselves "a blend of rum and other spirits". "Other spirits" is an industry euphemism for Grain Neutral Spirits, i.e. industrial alcohol produced using the cheapest base and distilled to 95%, which is something you then buy in bulk. Take a look at these guys, for example: https://ultrapure-usa.com/grain-neutral-spirits-options-signature-spirits/ https://ultrapure-usa.com/grain-neutral-spirits-options-sign... Or take a look at this page: https://ultrapure-usa.com/services-2/spirits-brand-owners/ https://ultrapure-usa.com/services-2/spirits-brand-owners/ Want to launch a Gin company? Rum? Whisky? They're experts at white-labeling! Yes, you have to read between the lines to understand how this works, because none of the large alcohol brands wants consumers to know how their products are actually made, it's all obscured by deceptive labeling. Also, at the end of the day, ethanol is ethanol. The difference between Captain Morgan's Original Spiced Gold and actual Jamaican rum is like the difference between synthetic diamonds and real diamonds. Yes, both are 100% carbon in a diamond lattice with the exact same refraction index and hardness and properties. They sparkle the same, they look the same, only experts can tell the difference, but a lot of people still care about the difference.
josteink 7y ago
> The "belts" seems like made up thing, bending the actual facts to fit someone's story. Agreed. As a Norwegian, I can attest Norway is known for its appreciation of fine spirits like scotch and cognac. That said, we’re clearly a beer-country. We make beer, we drink beer, we go out for a beer, and when people come over, we ask if they want a beer. Vodka is only drunk by a smaller niche or Eastern European immigrants. How we could ever be a “vodka nation” beats me. This looks like fiction. Edit: I guess the illegal “moonshine” culture in the northern parts of the country could account for “vodkaism”, but that’s not really a striving culture these days, and definitely not mainstream.
- iguy 7y ago
  "these days" is key. I think the map is trying to say that maybe 200 years ago, people mostly drank hard alcohol of some sort, not beer or wine. Do you know whether that is accurate? And they've lumped by country borders, too. Could people grow hops in very southern Norway, perhaps?
  - supermatt 7y ago
    They provide no sources for historical consumption. It looks fictional to me. I know there is a lot of fruit wines traditionally in lithuania, for example, but we have been lumped into the "vodka belt"...
- mongol 7y ago
  Do you have a aquavit / snaps tradition? I think it is likely that Norway, like Sweden, had more emphasis on these spirits traditionally, before 1950 or so.
- flurdy 7y ago
  Yeah, I am not sure of the Vodka belt for Norway. Though as others mentioned it may be more historic. Sweden does make Absolut though I'm not sure they are Vodka country either. My memory gaps from trips to see friends in Finland has convinced me they are Vodka country though, Koskenkorva and more. The second map where Norway prefer Beer as of 2012 is probably true. I am not quite sure why there are two maps. Though I agree moonshine was quite prevalent when I was young. Gallons of some dodgy near methanol drink bought of some Russian trawler... My Norwegian family does seem to drink a lot of Cognac and occasionally some Aquavit. I would say Norwegian drinking habits are not like other beer countries where they may have 1 or 2 pints a few times a week. It seemed in Norway more like once a month 8 pints or nothing for most... Though they are more cosmopolitan these days.
iguy 7y ago
I think that these belts make better sense in the west, than in south-eastern europe, maybe the gradient of climate is more complicated there. The other famous trio are the olive oil/butter/lard belts, which again were fairly clear lines in the west (although obviously things have changed now). Data-points on what fat your grandmother used, in south-eastern europe, anyone?
- babuskov 7y ago
  If you mean fat usage for cooking, etc. in Serbia it was mainly lard. Olives don't grow here and fat from milk is traditionally used to make "kaymak": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymak
- riffraff 7y ago
  Italy itself is split between butter (prevalent in the north) and olive oil ( prevalent in the South). Lard, possibly more used in the less coastal more mountainous central areas.
- zeristor 7y ago
  Supposedly there’s Rapeseed oil / Canola (for the sensitive) in the Baltic’s region

AdrianB1 7y ago

It used to be the same in Romania (we did tuica and palinca, same as pálinka), but lately people drink mostly beer in the summer and wine or spirits in the winter, it is a highly seasonal pattern. Same in Bulgaria, beer is very popular in warm seasons and it has a seasonal pattern.

wozniacki 7y ago

Hungarians invented the wine/soda combination known as fröccs and if you feel qualified to name all the various wine-to-water ratios, then you probably got your degree in alcohol at a Hungarian pub. Are any of the fröccs any good? Do you just add soda to the wine or is there a seltzer style dispenser as shown in the illustration?

greglindahl 7y ago
Watering wine is a historical thing dating back to the invention of wine. It makes bad wine taste a lot better. So I'm sure there's plenty of wine for which its fröcc tastes a lot better.
aries1980 7y ago
The seitzer style dispenser is the way to dispense the soda to the wine that is already in a normal tumbler or high ball glass. The wine is usually a dry white, e.g. rizling, not top-of-the-line. We have a saying “it's acceptable with soda” for “good enough”, comes from the fröccs. The purpose of adding soda is to make it more refreshing in the Summer and allows to drink more without flipping over. About the ratios: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%B6ccs https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%B6ccs is a good list. bor = wine, szódavíz = carbonated water.
PappaPatat 7y ago
> Are any of the fröccs any good? Not as in wine good, but on a warn day, soda and cheap wine taste fine. Same as for these moment (when I was young and piss poor), we'd buy "cooking wine" (cheapest shit on the shelf) and mix that one on one with cola. No matter how bad the wine, you can drink it easily and still get the added "benefit" of the alcohol.

boomboomsubban 7y ago

It depends on whether you call the first belt the "vodka belt" or the "spirits belt." Their definition of the vodka belt is >However, the general definition tends to include the following states as significant producers and consumers of vodka Hungary doesn't fit that definition, and brandy favoring states would be considered part of the wine belt.

MichaelMoser123 7y ago

https://shannon-pub.ru/drugoe/statistika-potrebleniya-piva-v-rossii-i-mire.html https://shannon-pub.ru/drugoe/statistika-potrebleniya-piva-v... here they say that as of 2016 Russians are drinking slightly more beer than vodka. I think such broad generalizations over vast geographical regions are often a bit tainted. Interesting that alcohol consumption is down ten litres from 2014 to 2016, but that might be because the economy isnt doing too well ; starting with the war in Ukraine.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]