Gastromaps: Alcohol

 It is not often we relate the subject of food with innovative cartography. But thanks to the people (or person) over at Strange Maps, I've been able to compile a nice collection of bizarre geographic representations of data laid out in gastronomical proportions. In this first installment of Gastromaps, we will limit ourselves to cartographic representations related to alcohol.

Our first map details the average number of liters of red wine drunk per capita in the countries of the world in 2006.

Luxemburg wins the race with a respectable 5.91 liters while Brazil comes in last at 0.l7 liters. The Brazilians shouldn't feel too bad about this poor showing though. They will be cheered to know that they came first in per capita cocaine consumption. Various line graphs are available to illustrate this point.

Next we have a map drawn up by none other than the late great Freddy Heineken (1923-2002), of the Heineken brewing empire. Heineken believed the European Union would function more smoothly were it to be divided into a series of smaller states based along the lines of ethnic homogeneity. His logic was that a larger number of smaller states (populations 5-10 million) would be more conducive to reaching balanced consensus than a small club of uber-powerful states. Obviously this proposal is merely academic and could never be implemented, but kudos to the beer billionaire for directing his energies to such lofty and abstract pursuits. I'm sure he would have been a formidable opponent on the Risk board.

Finally, you've got to love this advertisement for Absolut Vodka, depicting a redrawn map of the United States and Mexico. The map loosely depicts the borders which existed prior to the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) in which the Mexicans were forced to cede nearly half of their territory. The Mexican ad campaign was eventually picked up by the American media prompting calls for a boycott of the Swedish liquor. Had to have bumped up sales south of the border though.