Can a Cocktail Help Save the Planet?

They are very much part of agriculture. And as many of us know, conventional agriculture can be wasteful to an extreme. “I started off by asking the question, Why would you make a spirit from a purpose-grown crop when you can make it from a byproduct?” Byrne told me during our tasting. In coffee production, for every pound of coffee beans, there are five pounds of coffee waste. By rerouting that waste from rivers, where it would turn into methane, Good Vodka saves some 15.76 kilograms of CO2 emissions per bottle.

Who else is making booze to feel good about? With cold months coming and the specter of another lockdown hovering, what better time to find out? A quick internet search reveals that a healthy number of familiar spirits have begun to take environmental impacts seriously. Absolut Elyx is carbon neutral, and its stillage goes to feed local cows and pigs. Maker’s Mark has founded a water sanctuary and plants American white oaks to protect native animal species. Casa Sauza recycles its wastewater.

I call Alicia Kennedy, a Puerto Rico–based food and drink writer, to help me sort the wheat from the chaff. She advises me to take a finer lens to the question of what’s sustainable. “I’d first examine the agricultural practices to see whether the agriculture is exhaustive or regenerative and leading to soil productivity.” She says I must consider the choice of crop, whether labor is being compensated properly, whether the water is being recycled or repurposed, whether the yeast is naturally occurring, and whether the spirit is being made at a rate and scale conducive to all the other conditions.

I decide to assemble a slate of spirits with a true dedication to planetary health, and a week later, I am sitting on a porch, six feet apart from Rosie Ward, bartender at Hudson Food Studio, and beside Piper Olf, the mother of my son’s best friend. Before us is somewhere in the realm of 1,000 glasses, plus ample ice and mixers ranging from Dolin dry vermouth to limes to various juices, freshly pressed for the occasion.

We begin our tasting. And we hit an immediate speed bump: Spirits that are made differently taste different from their conventional peers. A martini made with one part vermouth to four parts Scottish Nàdar “climate-positive” gin (saves 1.54 kilograms of CO2 per bottle; distilled from green peas!) tastes off-balance, sharp at the end, and ethanol-y in the middle. A boulevardier with Arbikie’s rye scotch whisky is unusually sweet.

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