The Methods by Which Little Horsies Get Their Drank On

Life goes on, the writing continues. I'm thinking of changing my profile picture, but I'm not certain to what.

Anyway, today's hoofnote concerns the production and consumption of alcohol in Equestria. Our pony friends do occasionally drink, some a touch more than others, and I reference bars and taverns occasionally, so I thought I may as well put in some finer detail on this aspect of the world.

We must first hold in mind that these characters are a good deal smaller than us people, even accounting for all the anthropomorphizing inherent to a story such as this. Therefore, our little ponies do get intoxicated more easily, especially pegasi, who generally have the lowest body mass index of the three types. Earth ponies and unicorns can generally handle alcohol in equal portion, though it's more common for an earth pony to have the higher tolerance.

Wines and ciders are most common in Equestria, being produced in large quantities in Trottingham and other, smaller towns near the country's middle, where grape cultivation is easiest. Ciders and, to a lesser extent, shandies are more common in the west, near Appleloosa and Snowdrift. If ever a railway were to connect those cities, Appleloosa would prosper by shipping cider to Snowdrift. In Equestria, wine doesn't have the same status signals that it does for us, it being so common. There are still super expensive wines, as there is for anything, but simply having a glass with your dinner does not suggest any particular wealth or taste. Cider is viewed similarly, whereas a good shandy is a little harder to come by; in Equestria, it's not super common to come across a bar with a shandy on tap. If you do, you can expect it to be the most expensive thing on tap.

This is partially due to the culture surrounding alcohol, putting wine in the most common place and therefore elevating everything else, and partially due to the fact that beer production in general (as well as the harvesting of lemons or other citrus fruits) is not as widespread for them. The harvesting and processing of grain and hops is more localized to larger farms in the sunny mid-north sections of Equestria, along the same lines of longitude as the Everfree Forest, or Ponyville. The problem is that producing beer is not quite as easy as producing wine, and the overhead is more expensive, so there simply aren't as many breweries out there.

Your brown liquors, such as whiskey, bourbon, and scotch, are about as common as beer, and hail from the western sections of the country, where different types of grain grow in abundance. On the western side of Equestria, whiskey and bourbon distilleries can be found running from about the country's midpoint up past Appleloosa, with smaller distilleries scattered elsewhere. Manehattan, for instance, produces its own whiskey with a mixture of barley and corn shipped from the farmland south of Appleloosa, sometimes cutting in its own local rye. Finding a distillery that uses ingredients from its own land becomes harder and harder the farther east you travel. Scotch, meanwhile, comes from the southwestern areas of Equestria, and while its consumption does imply a certain amount of status or wealth, the prices on various types of scotch do not get as excessive as with us.

Traveling east from Snowdrift and nearby towns, we begin to find tequila and mezcal, produced from the agave plant, which is found in the narrow strip of desert between Applewood and the fields south of Trottingham, where the air is still hot enough for it to grow. Tequila is not very common in Equestria, mezcal less so, so it is often a more expensive spirit, and is only available as a summer and autumn drink; in the winter, harvesting the agave plant is not economical, it being much more scarce at that time of year. Trottingham and Applewood are the cities that most benefit from tequila production, as they are so close to the source. Spirits are rarely consumed neat, but when they are, tequila is the most common; its sweeter notes are pleasing to the Equestrian palate.

Farther south, where temperatures drop and it's even cold in the summertime, can be found vodka and gin. In some circles, these are thought of as "peasant" spirits, for their production is associated with the digging of dirt or the foraging of juniper berries, and not as sophisticated as the fermentation of grain or grapes or agave. Their production, too, is not as costly, so the expense of shipping them to other parts of Equestria is offset. This does leave more room for price hiking by middle-ponies, but you can find reasonably priced vodkas and gins if you have a discerning eye. In vodka especially, the ethanol-like flavor is so pronounced that seeing it drank straight, or even on ice, is rare. Vodkas and gins are not held to a particularly high standard in Equestria, and are usually used as well liquors for cheap cocktails, furthering their stigma as "peasant" spirits.

The eastern sections of Equestria do not produce very much alcohol at all, as they are largely uncivilized, though there are occasional distilleries that work with aniseed, producing things like absinthe, sambuca, or ouzo. Their heavy licorice flavor makes the use of these spirits much more difficult, and thus less commonly distributed outside their production areas. A bottle of ouzo might go for a couple hundred bits in a place like Canterlot, but the bottle will also probably last a long time, its contents drained in small sips over the course of a year or more. Adding a drop of black or red sambuca to a cup of coffee is a very wealthy thing to do in Equestria. There are always bottles of sambuca in Canterlot Palace, as Princess Celestia is partial to this practice.

Getting back to the middle of the country, there can be found scattered quantities of amari, vermouth, and other fortified wines, many of them kept close to their regions of origin. Forced to compete with wine, many of these others liquors are not given a fair chance by distributors elsewhere, so they do not get much attention in the country at large. There is no one type of alcohol in this paragraph that can be said to represent the middle lands of Equestria, but a couple of the ones that have managed to circulate in the larger cities are cynar, produced with artichoke and enjoyed for its bittersweet flavor and use as a digestif; and fernet, a more bitter amaro used semi-frequently to add depth and roundness to sweeter cocktails.

Outside Equestria's borders, many other types of alcohol are produced, but noted in this post are vodka from the minotaur lands (farther south) and rum, imported from the changelings (north). The minotaur continent is positioned around the south pole, some of it extending upwards to border Equestria's southern end, and while these two nations do not enjoy very much trade in alcohols, a trickle of vodka and gin makes its way north every year. Among the minotaurs, vodka and gin are more highly appreciated, and it is in their country that you will find the purer clear liquors and the more stringent distillation practices. There is no shortage of cold, pure water to be used in the process there, and the minotaurs take full advantage. The changelings, meanwhile, occupy an equatorial region of the planet, where sugarcane and other sweet fruits are more easily grown. Rum is difficult to produce in Equestria, and easy to import from the changelings; for that reason, the culture around rum is stunted, it being used in much the same way as vodka and gin, but in a higher class of cocktail. In our world, flavored rums are trivially common, but if a pony got her hooves on a bottle of banana rum, she'd be the talk of the neighborhood.

As stated, the Equestrians do not metabolize alcohol as effectively as we do, so drinking any sort of liquor neat (excepting wine, for how common and low proof it is) is not very common. Cocktails and beer are emphasized heavily in Equestria, while shots and other forms of straight liquor consumption are viewed with a leery eye. As with us, a pony who goes into a bar and only wants shots is regarded in rather a less charitable light.

Cocktails, so emphasized by their increased utility, are held to a higher standard in many parts of the country without necessarily being expensive. Common cocktails, such as vodka and orange juice, will cost something like seven or eight bits in most places; whereas a well prepared sazerac will run you about ten or twelve. The price points between qualities of cocktails are narrower, but the range of prices is also much greater and more granular than with us. You can spend a hundred bits on a cocktail one place and then spend a hundred-fifteen somewhere else, and get two completely different drinks, and maybe a couple envying looks from the other drinkers. While exotic ingredients aren't used to the same effect as with us, there is generally a greater emphasis on creativity, which leads to a greater variety of specialty bars, not only for certain spirits, but also certain types of cocktails. For instance, it's not uncommon for one to find a bar focusing specifically on the use of bitters in their cocktails, or a bar that specializes in variations on the combination of tequila and pepper infusions.

Bars themselves occupy much the same social position as in our world, and see the same general sorts of clientele. Bar tending techniques are, of course, different on account of magic, and by the same token, there's a whole set of magical cocktails and spirits, many of which will hit you pretty hard in the wallet. One of the more affordable magical cocktails is entitled the Smoking Stone: a combination of whiskey, cherry juice, cardamom bitters, and a maraschino cherry as garnish, with a minor enchantment on the cherry so that it radiates perfumed smoke.