Amid the maelstrom surrounding video podcasting, podcasts on streaming, and celebrity podcasts, narrative podcasts have gotten less love than usual. Unlike today, where celebrity podcasts and interview shows arrive via an assembly line, narrative podcasts were the Coin of the Realm in the early days of podcasting.
It's heartening that a new podcast exemplifies the narrative podcast structure at its most effective and seductive.
Distillate is a narrative podcast that explores the history, culture, science, and human stories behind the beverages we drink. Hosted by mixologist and voice actor Shawn Spitaleri, the show moves past typical cocktail recipes and techniques, instead dedicating episodes to a single ingredient, drink, or practice.
The podcast aims to unpack the deeper social, political, and chemical histories hidden inside your glass.
The show traces how a specific drink expands into larger cultural or historical phenomena, such as a trade economy or a political movement, and solo-narrative episodes that run between 24 and 32 minutes.
I usually do not include trailers in the review, but, in this case, I'll make an exception because Mr. Spitaleri has produced one of the best trailers of the year. After listening to the trailer, I immediately went out and found the first episode about rum and played it, much to my delight.
Here is a clip from the trailer: "Rum didn't just fuel the British Empire, it was built from the garbage of the sugar crop and fermented by enslaved people. Coffee reorganized how people thought, and the coffeehouse became the birthplace of modern institutions. An accident in a French cellar invented the drink we call champagne and the man who invented it spent the rest of hi life trying to remove the bubbles."
How can you not listen to the show after that intro?
"The story of what's in the glass is not just about the glass," Mr. Spitaleri tells us at the beginning of every episode, revealing his well-developed narrative chops. Like any adept narrator, Shawn Spitaleri is in no rush to release his story. His cadence -- deliberate, decisive, and daring -- massages the story so it's just right for the listener.
Mr. Spitaleri has brewed the secret sauce for a successful narrative podcast, which is one part exceptional writing and one part engrossing narration.
As of this writing, I listened to eight episodes, all of them superb. From the origin of wine to the chemistry of a cocktail, Distillate is a witches brew of colonialism, capitalism run amuck, innovation, and exploitation.
Even the choice of music playing under the narrative enhanced the story.
In the history of the cocktail episode, Mr. Spitaleri tells us: "This episode traces the history of bitters from ancient medicinal tonics through the 1806 cocktail definition, through a German military surgeon named Johann Siegert who crossed the Atlantic to join Simón Bolívar's revolution and spent four years in a Venezuelan river town developing a formula that is still secret today — and through the chemistry of what a few dashes of concentrated botanical extract actually does to a drink. The answer involves poison-detection receptors, a 200-year-old supply chain that routes ingredients through England to prevent reverse-engineering, and less than two percent of your drink by volume."
I was hooked by the show summary before listening. In addition to Mr. Spitaleri's obvious talent for weaving a historical narrative, the show manages to punctuate key messages about social justice, racism, colonialism, and profiteering seamlessly without damaging the fragility of the narrative.
Distillate is one of the best narrative podcasts to show up in podcast feeds in a while. You know a good storyteller when that person can fascinate you even though you may not care that much of the topic.
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