The Art of Distillation - A Lecture Delivered at Vintners' Hall #263535

At that early period, distillers were so much impressed with the marvellous qualities of distilled wine that they imagined it contained some of the attributes of the fire which had helped to make it. They sought to prolong distillation as much as possible, on heated sand, and they endeavoured to let the contact between the liquid in the still and the heat of the fire be as long as possible, thinking that such was the surest means of obtaining a more fiery spirit.