FROM RUIN TO REDEMPTION

MOTHERS’ RUIN

Women have played a pivotal role in the long history of fermenting and distilling, and were highly skilled at both. As the primary caregivers, women through the ages made beer – which was safer to drink than water – and distilled medicines for their families. However, as both processes moved from the domestic domain to the commercial, women’s attempts to earn an income were subject to such condemnation that they were demonised and ostracised by men who feared their nascent independence.

Sumerian women first fermented beer around 4000 BC, and it continued to be considered women’s work until the 1500s. By contrast, despite it being a woman (the firstcentury Egyptian alchemist Mary the Jewess) who was credited with inventing the first alembic still, it wasn’t until the dissolution of the monasteries in 16th-century Britain that women’s distillation skills were employed outside the home to provide medicine for the poor in their communities.