Mike Gerrard is the author of Cask Strength: The Story of the Barrel, the Secret Ingredient in your Drink, out in July 2023 from the Matt Holt imprint of BenBella Books. Before branching out into writing about spirits (the kind you drink), Mike was a prolific and award-winning travel writer. AWARDS I’ve written on travel for newspapers, magazines and websites in the UK, the USA, Australia, Africa and Asia. I’ve won several awards for my writing and photojournalism: Travel Distilled gained 3rd place in the AITO Travel Blogger of the Year Awards A Travelex Award for Best Consumer Magazine Feature. The story, for London’s Time Out, was about eating snake in China and is now the title piece in my collection of travel writing, Snakes Alive! 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 AITO Online Travel Writer of the Year Named as one of the 50 Most Influential Travel Journalists in the UK by the Press Gazette GUIDEBOOKS I’ve also written or contributed to over 40 guidebooks for major travel publishers, including the AA, AAA, National Geographic, Fodor’s, Insight, Dorling Kindersley, Thomas Cook, Michelin, Moon Guides and many more. FOOD AND DRINK I have always loved writing about food and drink for the travel pages, and as well as visiting distilleries I’ve toured vineyards in France, Greece, New Zealand, the UK and even Arizona. I’ve toured breweries in many countries, written about Bernachon’s chocolate shop in Lyon, visited the Champagne region of France and the sherry bodegas of Jerez. I’ve interviewed chefs including Raymond Blanc and Alain Ducasse, and worked for a week as a waiter in a taverna in the Greek islands. (As a result I now leave bigger tips.) EXOTIC TRAVELS My more exotic travels have taken me camel-trekking in the Sinai Desert, walking in the Great Rift Valley of Tanzania to raise money for charity, learning to jive in Barcelona, looking for orang-utans in the rain forests of Sumatra and staying with a farming family in China. OTHER WRITING As well as hundreds of travel pieces and dozens of guidebooks, I’ve also written a podcast for American Express, worked on mapping software for Microsoft, written hotel reviews for Google, written a crime novel, a collection of travel writing, an erotic novel, and three radio plays for the BBC.