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span class="caption" style="width: 237px;">A 'Married in a Fever Organic Martini' (Bloomberg/Courtesy of Deborah Gavito)'Here's to alcohol,' F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. 'The rose colored glass of life.'

While Scott Fitzgerald favored champagne, there a host of options, all produced in different ways. Alcoholic beverages vary according to their base material ' fruit-based, grain-based or root-based ' and the method used to produce them, whether fermentation or distillation.

Beer, the most widely consumed alcoholic drink, is usually made from malted barley or wheat flavored with hops, with strength normally around 4-6 percent alcohol by volume (ABV), or about 8 to 12 proof.

Wines are usually fermented beverages made from grapes. Their alcohol content normally ranges from 12.5 to 14.5 percent.

However, grain-based wines such as Chinese sorghum wine (baijiu) and Japanese rice wine sake belong to the family of spirits, distilled beverages with no sugar added to them, which can be made from grapes, other fruit, grains, roots or other parts of a plant. Their alcohol content is much higher, at least 20 percent ABV.

When a spirit is added to wine, the wine is fortified. Port and sherry are fortified wines. When sugar and flavorings are added to a spirit, it becomes a liquor.

Examples include Grand Marnier (orange-flavored brandy liquor), Baileys Irish Cream (Irish whisky and cream-based liquor), amaretto (sweet, almond-flavored Italian liquor), amarula (made from sugar, cream and the fruit of the African marula tree), Tia Maria (coffee liquor) and rum (made from sugarcane byproducts).

Grape-based spirits are called brandies. Brandy produced in the Armagnac and Cognac regions in France are called armagnac and cognac respectively; otherwise it is called eau-de-vie, which also refers to colorless fruit brandy.

Spirits made from fruit other than grapes are called fruit brandy. A spirit made from the heart of blue agave plant is tequila. When mixed with cointreau (orange-flavored liquor) and lime juice, it becomes a cocktail (a mixed drink of at least three ingredients, at least one of which is a spirit) called margarita.

Spirits made from grains include whiskies, which are made from fermented grain mash, aged in oak and bottled at a minimum of 40 percent ABV.

Malted barley makes malt whisky. If only one particular type of malted grain is used, the resulting beverage is called single malt whisky. Laphroaig, dubbed the most richly flavored, peated scotch whisky in the world, is a famous example.

When single malt whiskies from different distilleries are mixed, the result is referred to as blended malt whisky. When malt and grain whiskies are blended, usually with neutral spirits, caramel, and flavouring, they are called blended whiskies. Examples include Chivas Regal and Johnnie Walker.

The red label is a blend of 35 malt and grain whiskies for making mixed drinks, the black label a blend of around 40 whiskies, the gold label a blend of over 15 single malts and the blue label a recreation of the taste of earliest whisky blends in the 19th century.

Gin and vodka are also made from fermented grain mash although vodka can also be made from potatoes, sugar beets, molasses, soybeans, grapes, rice and sometimes even byproducts of oil refining or wood pulp processing.

Vodka, when mixed with tomato juice and assorted condiments such as Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, beef consommé or bouillon, horseradish, celery, olive, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, lemon juice and celery salt, becomes a cocktail called Bloody Mary.

Gin has a predominant flavor of juniper berries. When mixed with vermouth (fortified wine flavored with botanicals), and garnished with an olive or a lemon twist, it turns into one of the world's best-known cocktail called martini.

British secret service agent James Bond is famous for ordering a vodka martini that should be 'shaken, not stirred', apparently to get all the flavors perfectly blend all flavors.

The Chinese, however, take the 'shaken' playfully. They call it ma-ti-ni, which sounds like 'horse kicks you', which is what you may feel when drinking it too much.