Germany is a first world drinking nation. The booze the Huns don't produce
themselves, they import it. This country is famous for it's delicous beers, which are produced in more than 5000 breweries. After the consumption of beer/liqour was continuously declining over the last years, it is now increasing again. On one side former independent breweries bunch themselves to "brewery clusters", on the other side more and more micro-breweries and brewhouses are arising.
Wine is cultivated all up the river Rhine, in some parts of Franken, Hessen and Saxony. German wine had a bad reputation in the past, but there is a new generation of wine-makers, who produce excelent wines, which don't have to hide behind products from countries like France or Italy.
( Liebfrau(en)milch is the german revenge to the world for having lost all wars in the last century)
Generaly you can say, the more south you go, the better the wine gets. Up north the people don't have the sensibilty for wine( that might create an outcry of some Hamburg based connoiseurs, but to get a good bottle in Luebeck you have to enter a special wine shop, while in Freiburg you find good stuff in every super market)
The true german strenght is their beer. Only very few foreign suds have made it to pass german throats. (beer-fashion victims hands up). There's almost no danger to stumble over a Heineken (dutsch not deutsch), and when it comes to Budweiser in 99.9 cases out of 100 it's the original from the Check Republic.
When you look back to the German Purity Law (Deutsches Reinheitsgebot) from 1516 ( which actually was a Bavarian "reinheitsgebot") you might realize that this was the first campaign aginst drug abuse.
Everybody was brewing his or her own beer ( a lot of women were brewing, that leed us to whiches and drugs),and everybody was drinking beer and wine all day long because of the poor water quality. To offer a guest a glass of water was an insult.
To get better results, or to subrogate missing ingridients, people added herbs, berries and mushrooms to fortify their suds and alter the buzz. Some people realy freaked out with all the mushrooms and mary-jane inside
It was the King of Bavaria who stopped the party by inventing the "reinheitsgebot" where the undoubtfully general excellent quality of today's german beers find it's roots. ( but now german breweries have the problem to reach new target groups)
And let's be honest, too much beer just make you pee a lot and sleepy. That's why in Germany ber is not realy recognised as alcohol, but as food.
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It were probably the French, who brought the art of destilation to Germany. And that made everybody happy - not just legalité, egalité and fraternité, but the possibility to destilate alcohol out of everything you can grab on the fields and in the bushes.
While in the south the art of brandy production out of peers, apples,rasberry grapes ... (never call a "Weinbrand" "Cognac": the French will launch all of their 5 nucular missiles) is very popular (under harsh restrictions of the government) by every small wine producers, the northern regions are more tuned into vodka-like grain spirit called "Korn".
But recognize: All the traditions in producing and consuming alcoholic beverages just live on in the countryside. The big cities are part of the global leveling of cultures. ( There you also might have a chance to find a Bud)
As The Global Hangover Guide supports the idea of 1 world - 1 nation, we also support 1 world - 100.000 regions, liqours, wines and beers.
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