Pen Name:
None
Genre:
Articles, True Crime, Drinks, Travel
Website:
MikeGerrard.com
Amazon Author Page
Social Media:
Contact Email:
mgwrite@gmail.com
Bio
I’m a full-time travel and drinks writer, contributing to newspapers, magazines, and websites worldwide. I’ve written for people including National Geographic, The Times, American Express, Google, Microsoft, BBC Good Food, Waitrose Drinks, The Huffington Post, and BBC Travel.
In addition I’ve written over 40 guidebooks, one podcast, three radio plays, a collection of my travel writing (Snakes Alive), an erotic novel (Hot Aegean Nights) and a crime novel (Strip till Dead). My two most recent books are Cask Strength: The Story of the Barrel, the Secret Ingredient in Your Drink and Behind Bars: True Crime Stories of Whiskey Heists, Beer Bandits, and Fake Million-Dollar Wines.
My awards include:
A Travelex Award for Best Travel Consumer Magazine Feature
A British Guild of Travel Writers Award
Two Awards for Excellence from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild
A Benjamin Franklin Award in the USA for a guidebook to Paris
One of the Press Gazette’s 50 Most Influential Travel Journalists in the UK
AITO Online Travel Writer of the Year
Shortlisted for AITO Travel Blogger of the Year for a piece on my Travel Distilled website
I publish several travel websites and divide my time between my homes in Cambridgeshire in the UK and Green Valley in Arizona.
Books
Title: Behind Bars
Publisher: Prometheus, 2024
Genre: True Crime
Behind Bars is filled with stories both ancient and urgent of what happens when alcohol meets crime, from illicit stills in the Scottish Highlands to moonshine in the USA, rum smuggled by Caribbean pirates to the roaring times of Prohibition, current-day gangs selling millions of dollars’ worth of fake Bordeaux, and the often-unsolved cases of people walking into a liquor store, stealing whiskey bottles worth tens of thousands of dollars, and walking out, never to be seen again.
Award-winning travel and drinks writer Mike Gerrard takes readers on a centuries-long journey highlighting the most bizarre — and expensive — alcohol-related crimes all while revealing the inside world of spirits, how they have been distilled, legislated, imbibed, and infused into our culture for hundreds of years. Featuring colorful tangents and detailed appendices, Behind Bars will whet the whistle of any curious reader.
Available for Sale
Title: Cask Strength
Publisher: Matt Holt, 2023
Genre: Food and Drink
The story of the unsung hero of the world of spirits, wine, and beer and an invention as ancient and important as the wheel — the humble barrel.
Without the barrel, we would have no bourbon, no oak-aged chardonnay, no barrel-aged stouts . . . and no tabasco sauce, either. From its first use by the Ancient Egyptians, the barrel has left an unmistakable imprint on human history. The Romans used it in all corners of their vast empire, and explorers could not have charted the globe or opened up trade routes without them to store their food and water. And in all its thousands of years of use, the barrel’s basic design has barely changed at all — a testament to its sheer and simple perfection.
Cask Strength is more than a history book. In it, Mike Gerrard, an award-winning travel and drinks writer, investigates the making, buying, and selling of barrels and details how drinks like wine, tequila, rum, cognac, and others are enhanced by specific kinds of barrel production.
