Alcoholic beverages are usually classified according to their method of production: fermented beverages (wine, beer, tepache…), distilled beverages (vodka, shochu, brandy…), fortified beverages (Porto, Marsala, Sherry…), compound beverages (limoncello, maraschino, bénédictine…)…
But, since the distinctive property of alcoholic beverages is their alcoholic content, I think that it is better to classify them according to their ABV (alcohol by volume). This conceptualization is aimed at simplifying and rectifying beverage names – as of today the same beverage is called in different ways depending on its origin: an Italian pomace spirit is grappa, a French one is marc, a Cypriot one is zivania… – and also to improve people’s awareness: a distilled beverage with a 60% ABV is a different thing than a distilled beverage with 6% ABV.
According to their ABV, alcoholic beverages are classified into four categories:
• Cervoise (cervɔᵹa in our language) under 2.8%: small beer, ginger beer, jiuniang, kombucha, kvass, kefir, tepache and kumis are cervoises (barley cervoise, ginger cervoise, rice cervoise…).
• Beer (birra) from 2.8% to 8.3%: beer, palm wine, cider and makgeolli are beers (barley beer, palm beer, apple beer, rice beer).
• Wine (vino) from 8.3% to 22.2%: wine, barley wine, sake and mead are wines (grape wine, barley wine, rice wine, honey wine).
• Spirit (akkʋavite) over 22.2%: rakia, brandy, maotai, vodka, whiskey and absinthe are spirits (plum spirit, wine spirit, sorghum spirit…).
The values are based on common sense: an 18% ABV beverage is a strong wine while a 25% ABV beverage is a mild spirit, a 9% ABV beverage is a mild wine while a 7% ABV beverage is a strong beer.
The numbers may seem strange, but they are based on the duodecimal numeral systems that our culture adopts: 4% (2.8%), 10% (8.3%) and 28% (22.2%).
The beauty of this classification is that it enables us to have a clear and common terminology for all the alcoholic beverages in the world (Jiuniang? Rice cervoise. Chukikamizake, makgeolli? Rice beer. Tapuy, huangjiu, sake, mijiu, cheongju? Rice wine. Baijiu, rượu đế? Rice spirit), opening also our mind to new possibilities: why don’t we make a coconut cervoise, an orange beer, a date wine or a carob spirit?
This new terminology does not exclude by the way the current terminology focused on the way of production: wine is wine regardless of its origin, but we may specify its origin – if needed – adding that it is a fermented or a distilled wine.
One of the aims of our system is to standardize alcoholic beverage names from all over the world, avoiding hard to understand and pronounce exotic names, as seen above. But if these distinctions are important – as they happen to be in certain cases – we can differentiate between a chukikamizake and a makgeolli calling them respectively Japanese rice beer and Korean rice beer.
What this new classification instead excludes is the current distinction between wine and beer, according to which wine is from sugary ingredients (dolcezze in our language) and beer is from starchy ingredients (vitti). This distinction is not useless, especially from the manufacturing point of view, but it is redundant in our case, since we already specify the main ingredient: it is obvious that a rice wine comes from a starchy ingredient and a plum beer comes from a sugary ingredient.
The four categories are designed to clearly group alcoholic beverages in accordance to their suggested use: minors should not drink wines but they may drink cervoises; wines require a different glass from that of beers or spirits; and so on.
Another thing to notice is that even alcopops and cocktails fall into this classification: Bacardi Breezer, Smirnoff Ice and Rio are beers, while Spritz, Americano and Mojito are wines and Negroni, Martini and Sazerac are spirits.
An idea, very common for example in the French culture, is naturally opposed to our classification: “wine is not alcohol”. “Fermented alcoholic beverages are natural and good for your health, while distilled alcoholic beverages are unnatural and bad, so it is confusing to call wine a 14% ABV rum”. No, for us all alcoholic beverages are the same and there is no good or bad alcohol.
Another point of difference with Foreigners is that wine should be only made from grape and beer only from barley, so it makes no sense to call them “grape wine” and “barley beer”. Our point of view is that it is normal to call something specifically (like oil that originally meant only “olive oil”) and then – as your culture develops and you discover new ingredients – to widen your definition universally (sesame oil, peanut oil, palm oil… olive oil).
Il Vento d'Oriente 