Behind Bars is filled with stories both ancient and urgent of what happens when alcohol meets crime, from illicit stills in the Scottish Highlands to moonshine in the USA, rum smuggled by Caribbean pirates, the roaring times of Prohibition, to current-day gangs selling millions of dollars' worth of fake Bordeaux and the often-unsolved cases of people walking into a liquor store, stealing whiskey bottles worth tens of thousands of dollars, and walking out, never to be seen again. Award-winning travel and drinks writer Mike Gerrard takes readers on a centuries-long journey highlighting the most bizarre - and expensive - alcohol-related crimes all while revealing the inside world of booze: how it has been distilled, legislated, imbibed, and infused into culture and society for hundreds of years. Discover the evolution of the world-leading whiskey industry in Scotland; how the war in Ukraine has impacted illicit vodka rings; how Southern smugglers laid the foundation for NASCAR; and the machinations behind the Whiskey Ring Scandal, a White-House Prohibition conspiracy involving high-ranking American officials under President Grant. These crimes have not died with Prohibition. In 2018 at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre scientists used radiocarbon-dating techniques to examine fifty-five bottles of rare and expensive Scotch whiskies. Twenty-one of them were found to be fake. Gerrard interviews today's leading experts that employ cutting-edge testing techniques to investigate suspect bottles of rare and high-priced alcohol. Fake booze goes back even further than that. Archaeologists excavating around Pompeii in Campania, Italy, a region whose wine was much sought-after and expensive, have uncovered evidence that local wine merchants were filling amphorae with wine from other parts of Italy and passing it off as the real thing. Behind Bars smartly and swiftly shows that the link between alcohol and crime is a never-ending story.
Mike Gerrard is an award-winning travel and drinks writer who has written for National Geographic, The Times of London, American Express, Google, Microsoft, BBC Good Food, Waitrose Drinks, The Huffington Post, and BBC Travel. He has written over 40 travel guidebooks, including the best-selling National Geographic Traveler Guide to Greece, as well as a collection of travel writing, Snakes Alive (Blue Sky Books, 2010). He also publishes the Travel Distilled website (traveldistilled.com), which combines his two passions. His life as a travel and drinks writer has led to him drinking vodka for breakfast in Siberia, cognac in Cognac, sherry in Jerez, port in Oporto, champagne in Champagne, rum in Jamaica, jenever in Amsterdam, gin in Iceland, beer at the Great American Beer Festival, bourbon in Kentucky, whisk(e)y in Tennessee and Scotland, and visiting distilleries all over the world. His first drinks book is Cask Strength: The Story of the Barrel, the Secret Ingredient in Your Drink (Ben Bella, July 2023).
