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Jason Wilson

Jason Wilson writes the spirits column for the Washington Post. In 2008, his column won the Best Newspaper Food Column award from the Association of Food Journalists. Wilson is also the series editor of the annual anthology The Best American Travel Writing. His feature writing has appeared in many publications, including National Geographic Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, Salon, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post’s Sunday magazine.

Part travelogue, part spirits history, and part recipe collection, Boozehound is a journalistic excursion into lesser-known, forgotten, and misunderstood spirits for adventurous imbibers of liquors, bitters, and elixirs from around the world.

As a teenager, Jason Wilson pilfered shots from a dusty bottle of sambuca discovered in his parents’ pantry. Today, he’s a Washington Post spirits columnist who traverses the globe to explore the origins of what we drink and the reasons behind our choices. In Boozehound, Wilson lets us tag along as he tracks unusual libations, uncovering the secrets of their flavors and sharing their fascinating histories in the process. Wilson champions Old World liquors with hard-to-define tastes—a bitter and complex Italian amari, the ancient herbs of Chartreuse—and distinctive New World spirits like Peruvian pisco while seeking out visceral experiences in tucked-away taverns and the sources of production. He’s the first journalist to infiltrate the Jagermeister herb room (where he furtively tried to deduce the secret 56-ingredient recipe), and he journeys to the French Alps to determine if mustachioed men in berets really handpick flowers to make elderflower liqueur. This intrepid travel narrative combines Wilson’s bartending know-how with recipes and cultural analysis as it unravels the mysteries of taste, trends, terroir, and the peculiar alchemy behind the world’s intoxicants.

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