World's Strangest Liquors

From Pizza Beer to Lizard wine, gimmicks and folklore attract the curious
By Victoria Floethe,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 7, 2009 12:42 PM CST
World's Strangest Liquors
A man drinks fresh kvas, the ancient Russian fermented-bread drink, brewed in a basement of the 15th-century Savvino-Storozhevsky Orthodox Monastery in Zvenigorod.   (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

Necessity may have been the mother of invention for these traditional brewers, but a good marketing scheme has never hurt sales, either. (Remember the worm in the mescal trick?) Travel and Leisure gives us the world's most bizarre liquors:

  • Pizza Beer (Illinois): A chef couple wanted a beer to pair with their favorite food. The result: a beer that tastes like garlic, oregano, basil, and tomatoes.
  • Snake Bile Wine (Vietnam): Prepared tableside, a snake handler disembowels a live cobra and blends the bile from its gallbladder with rice wine. It's supposed to enhance virility.

  • O2 Sparkling Vodka (England): Vodka injected with CO2 "tingles with effervescence."
  • Chicha (Peru): Once the drink of the Incan ritual sacrifices, this corn beer is still made by Andean village women, who chew maize and spit the pulp into jars of warm water, where it ferments. 
  • Lizard Wine (China): A poisonous gecko is inserted into a bottle of rice wine or whiskey to marinate from 10 days to one year; then shots are served to cure cancer, arthritis, and ulcers.
For more strange liquors, click the link below.
(More liquor stories.)

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