# Distillation in Middle-earth?



## Rána (Jan 24, 2018)

Are there any examples? I feel like the Dwarves would have absolutely discovered the high-art of making whisky and brandy.


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## Elthir (Jan 25, 2018)

The Brandywine 

oh wait that was Tolkien's corruption of something else


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## Rána (Jan 25, 2018)

Where does Brandywine come from? The etymologies of Tolkien's words aren't always intuitive from a modern, New World point of view. I always think of "Cotton" fibers, even though the name is supposed to be derived from "Cottar"... although there theoretically could be varieties of cotton that are native to subtropical regions of the Harad. I recognize "Brandywine" as a variety of tomato with roots reaching into the 19th century. No tomatoes in Middle-earth though. Brandywine, Brandybuck, Brandy Hall... but I don't know of any references to brandy as a spirit. Isn't "wine" also Old-English for "friend?" (Ælfwine)


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## Elthir (Jan 25, 2018)

It's Tolkien having his fun as translator 

JRRT noted: "Of Baranduin _Brandywine_ seemed a natural corruption in modern times."

Hobbit-names of this river were based on Elvish Baranduin (baran "golden brown"), and by
"... a jest that had become habitual, referring again to its colour, at this time the river was usually called _Bralda-hîm_ "heady ale". The older name was _Branda-nîn_ "border-water".

Merry's real last name was _Brandagamba_, so a translation "Marchbuck" would have been nearer than Brandybuck.

Great stuff from JRRT!


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## CirdanLinweilin (Jan 26, 2018)

Galin said:


> It's Tolkien having his fun as translator
> 
> JRRT noted: "Of Baranduin _Brandywine_ seemed a natural corruption in modern times."
> 
> ...





A bit unrelated, but somewhere in the US, there is a bridge called the Brandywine. I have no idea if it is named because of Tolkien, but it is a very old bridge. 

Anyway, very interesting.

CL


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## Elora (Jan 26, 2018)

Ales were in Middle Earth so yeah, distillation of lots of sorts occurred in cannon.


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## Alcuin (Feb 16, 2018)

Ale and beer are brewed, not distilled. Distillation is used to concentrate the alcohol in a beverage. A low-concentration alcoholic mix is gently heated in a covered pot. Since alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, it comes out of the mix as a gas before steam does. (Steam is a gas, too, but it’s our word for gas made of water, just as ice is our word for the solid of water.) The alcohol gas is piped out of the closed container, cooled, and collected. The Chinese claim to have first distilled alcohol, but I think there is evidence of distilled liquors among the East Roman Empire (Byzantines) before the Arab Invasion. 

The _miruvor of Imladris_ is described as a liquor, a distilled alcoholic beverage. It might be a strong wine (a fermented beverage, not brewed), but Tolkien knew the difference between wine and liquor, and he used the word more than once. The effects of _miruvor_ are similar to liquor, too: Frodo felt bolder, stronger, reinvigorated. Since none of the Fellowship of the Ring were driving automobiles, it was no doubt good stuff to have around, but they did not have much of it, and Gandalf was in charge of the flask. 

Distilled beverages, by the way, are made from fermented (wine) or brewed (beers, ales) beverages. And brewed beverages are also fermented. The alcohol comes from fermentation by yeast. When yeast, a mold, consumes sugar in a closed environment with no air, it produces carbon dioxide gas and alcohol and as byproducts: think of the alcohol as yeast urine and you won’t be too far wrong. 

People have been deliberately fermenting and consuming alcoholic beverages for almost 10,000 years. The Egyptians brewed beer over 5000 years ago. Distillation of alcoholic beverages has only been going on since the time of Christ, the past 2000 years, and maybe only the past 1000 years.


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## Elora (Feb 18, 2018)

"Ale and beer are brewed, not distilled. Distillation is used to concentrate the alcohol in a beverage. A low-concentration alcoholic mix is gently heated in a covered pot."

Gee whiz! Thanks so much! Never knew that before.

Back to Middle Earth, given the presence of a wide range of alcoholic beverages including but not limited to ales and wines, it is not unreasonable to deduce that distillation occurred as well.

Though, I wouldn't be quite so ready to describe _miruvor_ as a liquor simply because it's effects were similar.


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## Alcuin (Feb 18, 2018)

Elora said:


> …I wouldn't be quite so ready to describe _miruvor_ as a liquor simply because it's effects were similar.


I don’t. Tolkien does. The word he repeatedly uses to describe _miruvor_ is “liquor”. I simply note that the effects of the stuff Tolkien himself describes as “liquor” sound like the same liquor he (and we) know in the real world.



Rána said:


> I feel like the Dwarves would have absolutely discovered the high-art of making whisky and brandy.


The Dwarves were certainly more likely to find themselves boiling their beverages, either purposefully or accidentally. Somehow, alembics seem to me more Dwarven than Elven. Maybe the Númenóreans were first to try it.


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## Elora (Feb 18, 2018)

Can you cite Tolkien's direct quotes please Alcuin - prefer Harvard style but whatever works best for you.


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## Alcuin (Feb 18, 2018)

Hmm. I suppose I should be courteous and accept that as a challenge. 

I am using a Houghton-Mifflin paperback edition of _The Lord of the Rings_, © 1994, with a picture of a Nazgûl from the Peter Jackson movies on the cover. One volume instead of three.

_Fellowship of the Ring_, “Flight to the Ford”, page 206, when the Hobbits begin to flag on the road with Glorfindel urging them to greater effort:


> “Drink this!” said Glorfindel to them, pouring for each in turn a little liquor from his silver-studded flask of leather. It was clear as spring water and had no taste, and it did not feel either cool or warm in the mouth; but strength and vigor seemed to flow into all their limbs as they drank it.


You might prefer to argue that since there is no explicit reference to _miruvor_, it isn’t _miruvor_. But I’d think you mistaken. 


_Fellowship of the Ring_, “The Ring Goes South”, page 283, when the party is caught in the snow on Caradhras. 


> “Give them this,” said Gandalf, searching in his pack and drawing out a leathern flask. “Just a mouthful each... It is very precious. It is _miruvor_, the cordial of Imladris. Elrond gave it to me at our parting. Pass it round!”
> 
> As soon as Frodo had swallowed a little of the warm and fragrant liquor he felt a new strength of heart, and the heavy drowsiness left his limbs. The others also revived and found fresh hope and vigor.



There are two more appearances of _miruvor_ that I can find. One is at the very beginning of “Journey in the Dark”, first paragraph, fourth sentence, page 287. Another is in the same chapter, page 302, at the top of the two hundred steps of the first stair beyond the Doors of Durin, where my copy says, “Gandalf gave them each a third sip of the _miruvor_ of Rivendell.” In neither case does Tolkien use the word “liquor”. I think the point clear enough, though perhaps you would care to dispute it. 

By the way, I really did attend Harvard for a while. What do you mean by, “Harvard style”? Do I pass the test?


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## Elora (Feb 18, 2018)

There are various forms of referencing citations. Harvard style is the most common and hence most widely recognisable. It is not a test nor a challenge, merely a consideration for the person who posed this question - easily understood citations will enable them to access the information they need to answer their question.

Or, in other words, it will enable independent information seeking behaviour.

Based on the citations you have provided, it may be necessary to confirm the interpretation of the word liquor as it may not exclusively and only mean a distilled liquid.

From the Australian Oxford Dictionary (1999), Oxford University Press, the word liquor can have other meanings:

an alcoholic (esp. distilled) drink
water used in brewing
other liquid, esp, that produced in cooking
That said, I believe there would have been distillation within Tolkien's Middle Earth, I just do not see a clear cannonical reference to it in the citations provided to date.


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## Alcuin (Feb 18, 2018)

Schools have changed their standards. We used “Chicago style” in the Dark Ages, when saber-toothed tigers and dinosaurs still roamed the earth. I’d heard of “APA” and “MLA” styles. I think I remember some older styles, too, but I’d not heard of “Harvard” before, though I see it in Google now. Thank you. It looks straightforward, not different from what I learned to use. 

I agree with you (and Rána) there was distillation in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. I do see canonical references to it, if by “canonical” you mean “published during the author’s lifetime and under his supervision.” In fact, since Tolkien used the word “liquor”, and I seriously doubt from the context that he was discussing “cooking”, and was unlikely (though possibly or tangentially) referencing “brewing”, particularly since the kind of beverage seems by inference to have been previously unknown to the hobbits, I will respectfully disagree with you. Respectfully. 

I think _miruvor_ was a liquor distilled in Rivendell. 

By the way, there is one more reference from Tolkien to _miruvor_. In _Unfinished Tales_, “The Disaster of Gladden Fields”, “The sources of the legend of Isildur’s death”, there is a passage,


> …the Dúnedain carried in a sealed wallet on his belt a small phial of cordial and wafers of a waybread that would sustain life in him for many days – not indeed the miruvor or the lembas of the Eldar, but like them



And in _The Road Goes Ever On_, Tolkien defines miruvor as a “word derived from the language of the Valar; … the drink they poured … at their festivals. …the Eldar believed it to be made from …honey.” That sounds to me like mead, or distilled mead, which is still made and sold today. Irish Mist is a distilled mead, quite potent (particularly in its older form before the distiller in Ireland was sold and then resold: either 87 or 89 proof then (Google says 80 proof, but I purchased the last two bottles in the bar before the old Boston Gardens was torn down in the 1990s) versus 70 proof today), but very smooth, sans the traditional bite of strong drink. Besides Ireland, distilled mead was known among the Norse and around the Baltic coast. My guess is that Tolkien was familiar with it.


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## Elora (Feb 18, 2018)

I referred only to the sources you cited, Alcuin. If you disagree, no matter how respectfully, then clearer sources that directly support your key contentions are necessary. 

Please bear in mind you that asserted that there was clear cannonical support for distillation per se, whereas I stated that it was not unreasonable to deduct it occurred from the cannon material. When you doubled down on your very specific assertion, I requested references by way of citation. However, those citations provided were not as specific and clear as they needed to be.

Now turning to your most recent citation from _Unfinished Tales_: I note that here that it does not refer to miruvor (but something like it - note, being similar is not being the same). And still, there is yet to be cannon to assert that miruvor was a liqueur (and hence distilled) or otherwise alcoholic beverage (cordials then and now may and may not possess alcoholic content).

This is not unsurprising, for Tolkien's style was high fantasy rather than gritty realism. There was much he left to his reader's imaginations, knowing them not to be dullards. He did not describe the tedious details...leaving it to us to deduct...hence I return to my starting position: given the presence of wines and ales, it is not unreasonable to deduce that distillation also occurred. As I have yet to see cannon, however one might define cannon, I do not go so far as to say there is clear canonical evidence to support that distillation occurred.


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## Halasían (Feb 19, 2018)

....and then you have to wonder what that 'Orc-Draught' the Uruk's (or it could have been the Mordor Orcs) dumped down Merry and Pippen's gullet was.....


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## Alcuin (Feb 19, 2018)

Elora said:


> Please bear in mind you that asserted that there was clear cannonical support for distillation per se, whereas I stated that it was not unreasonable to deduct it occurred from the cannon material.


I have made no such claim. *Elora, you made this claim yourself in post #6 and attributed it to me.* Now you attack a straw man of your own construction. If I am in error, and have _explicitly_ made this claim, you find it in this thread, *cite it*, and I will give you an apology. 

My explicit claim is this:


Alcuin said:


> The _miruvor of Imladris_ is described as a liquor, a distilled alcoholic beverage. It might be a strong wine (a fermented beverage, not brewed), but Tolkien knew the difference between wine and liquor, and he used the word more than once. The effects of _miruvor_ are similar to liquor, too: Frodo felt bolder, stronger, reinvigorated. … [I]t was no doubt good stuff to have around, but they did not have much of it…


*What I claim is that Tolkien uses the word “liquor” to describe miruvor.*


Alcuin said:


> Elora said:
> 
> 
> > Though, I wouldn't be quite so ready to describe _miruvor_ as a liquor simply because it's effects were similar.
> ...



You demanded citations from the text, and I provided two citations where Tolkien uses the word “liquor”. One of them explicitly calls _miruvor_ “liquor”. 

You shifted your argument to the definition of the word “liquor”.


Elora said:


> Based on the citations you have provided, it may be necessary to confirm the interpretation of the word liquor as it may not exclusively and only mean a distilled liquid.
> 
> From the Australian Oxford Dictionary (1999), Oxford University Press, the word liquor can have other meanings:
> 
> ...


and inserted a reference to whether or not distillation was “cannonical”.


Elora said:


> That said, I believe there would have been distillation within Tolkien's Middle Earth, I just do not see a clear cannonical reference to it in the citations provided to date.


I reject your argument for an alternative, less commonly-used definition of the word “liquor”, particularly when employed by a middle-aged Oxford don who frequented pubs. And for future reference, _canon_, a set of laws or rules, and _cannon_, an artillery piece, are from the same Latin root, _canon_, “a reed or tube”. Latin _canon_ is from Greek _kanon_ “any straight rod or bar; rule; standard of excellence”. My understanding is that the “n” was doubled for the word referring to artillery beginning in the 1800s in order to avoid confusion: you may find that in the embedded link for “cannon”. 

But fair enough: there _are_ different definitions for “liquor”. All the same, I find your argument a slender reed, in the old canonical sense. 

I then offered a neutral reference from _The Road Goes Ever On_, a work that I’d like to point is “canonical” in that _it was written by the author and published in his lifetime and under his supervision_. This citation can be found on page 272 of _The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion_ by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull. This book is printed by Tolkien’s publishers under the imprimatur of the Tolkien Estate and written with the occasional assistance of Christopher Tolkien, who under the circumstances - he’s still alive and not known to be shy about objecting through the Tolkien Estate about things he doesn’t like - must certainly approve it. The reference is to “_miruvor_, the cordial of Imladris”, the same passage to which I referred in this post. The first number references the page in the one-volume copy of _LotR_, the second that in _FotR_ alone:


> *290 (I: 304). miruvor, the cordial of Imladris* – Within the mythology, presumably named after a cordial (flavored drink) of the Valar which Tolkien describes in _The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle_, _miruvóre_. “According to the Eldar, [it is] a word derived from the Valar; the name that they gave to the drink poured out at their festivals. Its making and the meaning of its name were not known for certain, but the Eldar believed it to be made from the honey of the undying flowers in the gardens of Yavanna, though it was clear and translucent” (p.61). “Its actual origin as an ‘invention’”, however, as Tolkien writes in a manuscript quoted in _Parma Eldalamberon_ 12 (1998), p. xi, “goes back to at least 1915, its real source being Gothic _*midu_ (=Gmc. [Germanic] _među_ [“mead”] + _wōÞeis_ [“sweet”], then supposed to have been developed so: _miđuwōÞi_ > _miđuwōði_ > _miřuwōři_ > _miruvóre_”.


A neutral citation. You may _not_ describe this as “non-canonical” because _The Road Goes Ever On_ was published by Tolkien himself under his own (rather strict) supervision. You can, if you wish, argue that it says nothing about _distillation_. I will concede that, because it does not; however, I refer to my earlier post


Alcuin said:


> That sounds to me like mead, or distilled mead, which is still made and sold today. … Besides Ireland, distilled mead was known among the Norse and around the Baltic coast. My guess is that Tolkien was familiar with it.



I suggest we chalk this up to a difference of opinion similar to “Do Balrogs Have Wings?” For the record, I believed they did when I first read the tale several decades ago; I no longer believe Balrogs have wings. You are correct in one respect: it does not appear to be provable “canonically”. It is described as “liquor” in a way that in my opinion fits only the first definition you provided from the Australian OED: “an alcoholic (esp. distilled) drink”. It does not sound like mead, though the drinks Gildor and Tom Bombadil gave the hobbits certainly do. _Miruvor_ is described as affecting its imbibers as would a distilled spirit. And so I think it is. You are free to disagree, though I will point out that your “liquor” is something from a brewing or cooking pot, which means that if it’s alcoholic, it must weaker than wine or mead, because the alcohol will boil away. (If you cover or seal the kettle to keep the alcohol in it, you’re in the first stage of distillation; and if you then collect the alcohol to save it, well that _is_ distilling, the Australian OED’s first definition of “liquor”.) If _miruvor_ is weaker than beer or wine, then to provide its stated effects, perhaps you are resorting to the position that _miruvor_ produces those through Elvish “magic”? 

But *Elora*, please do not attribute to me something I did not say, construct a straw man around your assertion, and then proceed to attack the straw man in order to discredit me. I do not appreciate it. I will call you or anyone else on it every time. Other than that, I am delighted to agree with you or disagree with you, as the case may be, without taking offense. 

Now, shall we set this aside as an honest misunderstanding? We have, after all, discovered a minor “Balrogs and wings” issue. My vote is for distillation in Middle-earth. I point out that you do not rule out distillation in Middle-earth. *I assert the evidence indicates miruvor is a distilled “liquor” of mead, for “liquor” is the word Tolkien uses to describe it, and Tolkien and his fellow Inklings knew exactly what implication he made using the word “liquor”.* As if debating Balrogs and wings, I gleefully point out that you cannot prove your position, either, and claim I have the better argument. 



Halasían said:


> ....and then you have to wonder what that 'Orc-Draught' the Uruk's (or it could have been the Mordor Orcs) dumped down Merry and Pippen's gullet was.....


Sounds like whiskey to me; moonshine if it’s clear; vodka if it’s clear and made from ’taters.


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## Elora (Feb 23, 2018)

Salty much? Guess you had a rough day....let's get back to topic.


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## Rána (Feb 27, 2018)

Now that things have leveled off a bit I feel ready to jump back in.

It's helpful to know that words like "liquor" and "cordial" do actually appear. I couldn't remember anything stronger than "draught." Although I'm willing to concede that alternate definitions (pot-liquor jumps into my mind first, sweet potato is my personal favorite) and poetic-descriptions are possibilities. I've been building my digital collection of Tolkien, so it will be easier to search for specific words in the future.

I guess it strikes me as odd that there aren't more references to liquor. I'm terribly fond of amaros (in fact, I'm enjoying a Fernet-Branca with a wedge of lemon right now) and I can only imagine what fabulous extractions of herb and spice that the Elves would've concocted; the Dwarves would've been whisky fiends for sure; and what sensible Hobbit would turn down a sip of brandy or port (or whatever the name for fortified wine would be in Middle-earth)??


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## Elora (Mar 1, 2018)

Yes indeed, and given how mutable language is in terms of meaning of words across culture and time, caution helps us avoid assumptions that our present "modern" interpretation is what the author intended to mean in the parlance of his/her place and era.


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