A lifetime of learning

Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown have spent their lives learning about spirits – and sharing their knowledge with others

Like a lot of couples, Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown met at a party. They bonded over a mutual interest in drinks. For the past 30 years, they have been researching and writing books on drinks and cocktail history together (although Jared is perhaps better known as Sipsmith’s master distiller). The couple, who live together in south-west England, are now world-renowned for their knowledge on the history of distillation, and have worked to discover the truth behind some of today’s commonly accepted drinks myths – including the origins of gin. Since the 1990s publication of their first book, Shaken Not Stirred: A Celebration of the Martini, they have released around 20 other original texts, translations and revised editions including the two-part Spirituous Journey: A History of Drink and an edition of The Distiller of London, a 17th-century text by the Worshipful Company of Distillers. Perhaps their highest priority, though, is to share their learnings for the benefit of others in the drinks industry.

Bethany Whymark (BW): When did your interest in spirits start?

Anistatia Miller (AM): I was born into spirits; my dad was in the business. It was considered to be quite a black-sheep moment when I said I wanted to read archaeology… It wasn’t really until [Jared and I] got together and decided we were going to write about spirits that my dad said, “Well, I guess you are my kid after all.” That was about 30 years ago, so it was a long time between shock, dismay, and finally getting retribution.

Jared Brown (JB): Aged six, my stepfather was fascinated that I was so interested in and articulate about wine. I wasn’t drinking, just tasting and exploring the flavours, and I can still remember the wines that I tasted... At 11, I started raiding the liquor cabinet for base spirits. I remember the first was something like five litres of coffee liqueur, then orange liqueur, raspberry liqueur, and I handed them off to my mother and her friends… I just liked the creative process.

AM: The problem is that he’s a distiller savant, he always has been. “What do you do on your days off?” Well, let’s see whether or not we can make our own homemade Korean makgeolli. Why not? Or, I think we should try making some English maraschino liqueur, just for fun.

JB: We launched this Martini website (martiniplace.com) in 1996. Within six months, HarperCollins emailed and said,

“We want to turn it into a book.” It was a young editor at HarperCollins; this was his first acquisition. We then got a call from the managing editor, who said, “Really sorry, nothing personal, but we’re cancelling 217 titles this season, and yours is one of them…” And I said, “I think I owe you an apology… If you take a good look, you’ll see we delivered early and we’re already on press.” She hung up and then rang back a while later and said, “5,000 copies?! I don’t know what we’re going to do with those…” The book went to 17 printings before the publish date. I’m not sure where that managing editor is now, but I think she’s realised that cocktails, to use her words, are not “a dead subject” after all.

BW: How did you get more involved in drinks and distilling history?

AM: It started with the website: we decided it was time to play “Did you know that…?” At the time, we were writing two books that triggered our brains into thinking about history. My first degree was in archaeology and Egyptology, so I have always been kind of history oriented… When we wrote the first version of Shaken, we actually wrote up