In an interview with Beverage Master, head alchemist Alan Bishop of Spirits of French Lick, a craft distillery located in West Baden Springs, Indiana, said, “Aquavit (taken from the Latin aqua vitae, which means “water of life”) can trace its roots under various names back to the Aquavitae Treatises of the 1400s to 1600s. It has deep connections to Sparagyic medicine,” he explains, “so three of my major interests were piqued: alchemy, history and complex botanical distillations.”