Ethanol and an Erasure poem

The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…

By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide trade in Ethanol 2022 $83.5 Billion

As a commodity, Ethanol is alcohol made on an industrial scale, from various grains – in the US for example – it is corn which is either dry or wet milled. Wet milling is the same process that has been used for millennia to make alcoholic beverages such as beer, first soaking the grain to convert the seed’s stored starches into sugars which are then boiled out of the “mash” and fermented. If your town has a “Maltings” – that is what it was for… Further distillation at the artisan scale rather than the industrial, produces spirits such as Whisky and in the distillation – another type of alcohol which has formed during fermentation, is separated out – Methyl alcohol which due to its lower boiling point, is the first product to emerge during distillation and is discarded. Methyl alcohol would do you no good to drink – wood alcohol as it used to be known, will send you blind as “Meths” drinkers and drinkers of Absinth found until that drink was outlawed…

Ethyl alcohol is used for medicinal products such as moisturisers or bath salts, and in the car manufacturing process for the production of plastics for dashboards and seats and in a lot of personal care products. Ethanol is also added to petrol making it marginally more carbon friendly but any move to switch over to all ethanol would not work due to the extra land and other resources needed. Methyl alcohol on the other hand, is manufactured from fossil fuels and is used not only as a solvent for many products, but is also further processed to make many other chemical products.

The value of Ethanol worldwide production in 2020 was 98.6 billion litres, the value of alcoholic beverages in the US alone was US$1,055 bn in 2024 so both alcohols for drinks and industrial alcohols are big commodity business! The beverage side is made up of many sources and producers, vineyards, many distilleries, and breweries from very large down to craft beer small. There are also many drinks manufacturers of liqueurs, for example, who use industrially produced ethanol as their product base and ethanol is also used to extract many flavourings for the food industry. I once worked in a factory which created ginger flavouring for Gripe Water by steeping dried kibbled (raked apart) ginger in pure alcohol at this concentration, the liquid would do you serious damage however, after the quality control samples had been kept for the relevant number of years, instead of throwing them away we added water and sugar to produce a ginger liqueur (for our own consumption I hasten to add and naming no names). You may not be surprised to learn that the alcohol is no longer permitted in the gripe water and the warming, soothing ginger flavour has to be extracted in other ways. But this is mere extraction and addition of a flavour, the really interesting thing about the production of some alcoholic drinks, is how the flavours come about inherent to the process.

Take for example Sherry. In Spain and Portugal, only certain parts of the grape harvest are considered “dry” enough to make sherry and that which is too sweet is sent to the UK where the  apparently unrefined taste of maiden aunts and secret drinkers, is for sweet sherry drunk from tiny glasses – a product that would never pass the lips of a true Iberian! So having made wine from the suitably “fino” grapes, the sherry is then subjected to something which every other winemaker desperately seeks to avoid – oxidation – albeit in a very limited and controlled way. Bodegas are places where the nascent sherry is put into huge barrels to age but which have an airspace at the top separated from the liquid below by a blanket of yeast known as “flor”. It is critical that the flor is not broken and so as sherry is drawn off from the barrel, it must be replaced with fresh wine at an equal rate so that the flor doesn’t sag and split. Whilst in the barrel, the air penetrates the flor and gently oxidises the wine producing the complex flavours of sherry. The Bodega is thus a dynamic blending process in which no batch of sherry will ever be quite the same an another. Some bodegas have a brew which is hundreds of years old and the process of moving sherry through several bodegas produces a beverage of immense complexity and of gradually elevating price. This is different from the blending of whisky where various single-malt whiskies, not all of which would be considered palatable on their own, are mixed to achieve a consistent blended flavour. There is a link between whisky and sherry however, because traditionally, the whisky industry used empty sherry casks to age their whisky and since the refined spirit is excellent at dissolving flavour, it must be supposed that the whisky picks up some subtle notes from the sherry barrels. “Isca” is a Gaelic word for water and whisky is considered “the water of life” in Ireland – as long as you don’t drink too much to often that is…

And so to today’s poem which is an Erasure poem in which you take another poem or piece of prose and cross out words and lines until you are left with a new poem. The text I took is a poem by Hristo Botev a brilliant Bulgarian poet and revolutionary. Born in Kalofer on January 6, 1848. Died a heroic death in the western part of the Bulgarian Range on June 1, 1876, as part of a voivode of 200 rebels who had set out to die for the liberation of their enslaved Fatherland. The inscription chiselled on the granite rock by which he was killed reads: “Your prophecy has come true – you live on!” The poem he wrote is about drinking to forget the dire situation of kin and country and my erasure poem does not substantially change the meaning of it but condenses it into a somewhat more modern form. This can be a good method for editing and sharpening one’s own poems but since I hadn’t written anything alcohol related…

Ethanol

Give me wine
so I can forget
glory and disgrace
forget my birth
my father dear
and souls never curbed
fighting their bequest
forget my family
my father grave
my mother’s tears

The rich man with
his aristocratic airs
the merchant his plunder
the priest reciting holy mass
rob people who must hunger
rob them, you wanton band

We drink, we sing
every hand holds a glass
snarl against the tyrant
taverns too small for us
we shout…
                    but sober…
we forget pledges, phrases
say no more, roar with laughter
at the people’s sacrifices

While the tyrant rages
ravages our home
slaughters, hangs, flogs
then fines the people tamed

Fill the glass
let me drink
bring my soul its soothing
kill the sober way I think
let my hand grow soft
I’ll drink despite
despite you patriots
– nothing near and dear
and you?
Idiots…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Here is the erased poem…

And here is the original poem…

In the Tavern

by Hristo Botev

It’s hard, it’s hard, so give me wine.
Drunk, I can forget the face
the thing you fools cannot define:
where lies glory – and disgrace.

Forget the country of my birth,
my father’s dear homely nest,
and those whose souls were never curbed,
whose fighting soul was their bequest.

Forget my family in their need,
my father’s grave, my mother’s tears,
and those who’d steal a crust of bread
with all the aristocratic airs.

The rich man with his crookedness,
the merchant thirsting for his plunder,
the priest reciting holy mass,
rob from the people who must hunger.

Rob them. All you wanton band.
Rob them. Who will make a fuss?
Soon they’ll be too tight to stand:
every hand holds up a glass.

We drink, we sing with recklessness,
we snarl against the tyrant foe,
the taverns are too small for us –
we shout: “To the mountains we shall.

We shout, but when we’re sober
we forget our pledges and our phrases
and say no more, and roar with laughter
at the people’s sacrifices.

While all the time the tyrant rages
and ravages our native home,
slaughters, hangs and flogs and curses
then fines the people he has tamed.

So fill the glass and let me drink.
Bring my soul its soothing gift
and kill the sober way I think
and let my manly hand grow soft.

I’ll drink, despite the enemy,
despite all you, great patriots.
There’s nothing near and dear to me,
and you… well. you are idiots.