I'm not counting medicinal liquors in China or Europe, I want to know when the first folk who had a few shots and thought this could make for a good party existed. According to wikipedia, the Irish, Italians, German, and Chinese may have had it around the 12th century, but every link I click from there mentions medicinal uses. I'm more in the market for liver destroying uses. Thanks in advance!
The Capacha culture of West Mexico's Pacific coast may have had distilled beverages as early as the Early Formative (1500 BC to 800 BC). To copy/paste a comment I made a year ago on the topic,
The Capacha culture has very distinct vessel forms that may have been used for distillation. Zizumbo-Villarreal et al. (2009) conducted a series of experiments on replications of Capacha ceramics to test whether or not the shape was conductive to distillation. The idea came from researching other early distillation forms the researchers noted that the Capacha ceramics looked like early Chinese and Mongolian stills. They made replicas, they ran their experiments, and tested their brew and found that they averaged 20% alcohol by volume after a single distillation with the possibility of greater concentrations with subsequent distillations. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Zizumbo-Villarreal et al. made no note of distinct forms of ceramic use-wear nor tested their brew for chemical signatures that could be used in residue analysis. So while the possibility that distillation could have existed not only for the Capacha culture, but other cultures thought to have had distillation, whether or not they did still needs to be researched.
