I’ve been studying wine and spirits for over two decades. One of the things I’m most interested in when we travel is what I call drinks culture – what can you learn about a country through their cultural drinking habits and traditions.

I’ve been known to order several drinks off a menu – just so I could taste them. And I could spend hours in the local grocery/wine/liquor store just studying the shelves. Ken is not as enthusiastic about this activity, so I usually send him off to climb a mountain or something.

When we’re traveling, I post my little travelogues on the go and off the cuff. Instagram only allows 2,200 characters per post, so I have to be stingy with words. Maybe that’s a good thing. 😉 One of the reasons I started this blog is so I could take a pause after our trips, and look at something(s) more in depth. Like the local drinks situation.

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Here is my local drinks culture report (aka what to drink) from Vilnius, Lithuania:

Alus (Beer)

Lithuania is a beer country. Lithuania has one of the oldest and most distinct beer traditions in Europe, and Lithuanians are very proud of their beer. Rightly so – all of the beers we had there were outstanding.

Beer (alus) has been brewed in Lithuania since at least the 11th century, mostly by families, using local grains, wild yeast, and secret spice blends (they’re always a secret). These so called farmhouse ales were unfiltered, unpasteurized, and often unpredictable. But that was exactly the point. Brewing wasn’t industrial science, it was ritual – passed down from one generation to the next.

Even under Soviet rule, when large-scale brewing was de rigueur, many rural Lithuanians continued to brew their own beer on the QT. After independence in the 1990s, these traditional farmhouse styles began to resurface. Today, Lithuania has earned global respect for its farmhouse styles that have persisted for centuries.

Gira (Lithuanian Kombucha)

Gira is the Lithuanian version of kvass, which we tried in Latvia. Think of gira and kvass as kombucha before kombucha was cool. Like kvass, gira is a lightly fermented beverage made from black rye bread. It’s low in alcohol, and deeply rooted in Lithuanian culture. It’s basically liquid bread. And it’s delicious.

During Soviet times in Lithuania, the Soviets imposed some centralization on the production of gira, but allowed it to be produced as an affordable alternative to Western soft drinks, which were considered ideologically dangerous. Lithuanians continued to make gira at home using family recipes passed down through generations, preserving a sense of cultural continuity and local flavor in a time of political and social control.

Today, gira is enjoying a quiet revival. We tasted it on our Lithuanian food tour, and it was delicious. I’m a fan.

Midus (Mead)

Mead is one of the oldest traditional drinks in Lithuania. Mead is made from fermented honey, water, and spices. It’s a fairly benign drink – not especially strong. It dates back to pagan times when mead wasn’t just a drink – it was a sacred offering to the gods, a medicine, and a staple of celebrations.

During the Soviet era, mead production declined, but Lithuanians continued to make it at home. (You’re starting to see the pattern here, yes?). Today, mead is making a comeback – we found it readily available nearly everywhere, especially in sets of little bottles for tourists.

Fun fact: the word, honeymoon, is comes from the Scandinavian tradition of giving new couples a month’s worth of honey-based mead for the first lunar cycle of the marriage. Pagans believed it would bring good luck and fertility to start married life. 

Now you know.

Lithuanian Flavored Schnapps

On our first night in Vilnius, the waiter offered us a glass of local schnapps after dinner. You know how I love my German schnapps, so sure. He kept telling us it was “team” flavor. We had no idea what he was saying, so we just went with it and called it a cultural experience. The flavor was unmistakable once we tasted it: THYME. We later learned this schnapps comes from a distillery in northern Lithuania called Pakruojis Manor. You think we have a lot of flavored spirits in the US? We can’t begin to compete with this lineup: beet, horseradish, bacon, thyme, mugwort (if you’re into witchcraft, you use mugwort to cleanse your aura), maple, carrot, and truffle.

Later in the trip on our food tour, we tried bacon, beet, and horseradish schnapps. They taste just like you think they would taste.

Vytautas: Lithuanian Salt Water

Have you ever taken a drink of something expecting it to taste one way, and it turned out to taste completely and utterly wrong? Messes with your head. I bought a bottle of water at the duty-free in Vilnius to take with me on my flight to Munich. Didn’t give it much thought – it was water. Usually the only thing you have to worry about with water in Europe is whether it will have bubbles or no bubbles. I cracked it open, took a sip, and what-in-the-fresh-hell is wrong with this water?!? Why is it salty? And not a little bit salty. The Dead Sea in a bottle salty.

Wow, is this bad. Undrinkable. I threw it into the nearest trash can.

Decided to look into this. It can’t be a mistake. Turns out, Vytautas is somewhat of a Lithuanian national icon. It’s a naturally carbonated spring water, packed with minerals like sodium (a shit ton of it), magnesium, calcium, and sulfates. Lithuanians swear it has superpowers – rehydrates, cures a hangover, and settles a stomach. Ugh. My stomach feels anything but settled.

Į sveikatą ! 🍻