Barley wine There are two primary styles of barley wine: the American which tends to be more hoppy and bitter with colours ranging from amber to light brown and the English style which tends to be less bitter and may have little hop flavour, with more variety in colour ranging from red-gold to opaque black. Until the introduction of an amber-coloured barley wine under the name Gold Label by the Sheffield brewery Tennant's in 1951 (later brewed by Whitbread), British barley wines were always dark in colour. The beer writer Michael Jackson referred to a barley wine by Smithwick's thus: "This is
History of alcoholic drinks "Gandhara stills" were only capable of producing very weak liquor, as there was no efficient means of collecting the vapors at low heat. While the art of wine making reached the Hellenic peninsula by about 2000 BC, the first alcoholic beverage to obtain widespread popularity in what is now Greece was mead, a fermented beverage made from honey and water. However, by 1700 BC, wine making was commonplace. During the next thousand years wine drinking assumed the same function so commonly found around the world: It was incorporated into religious rituals. It became important in hospitality, used for medicinal purposes,