Did you know you can get whisky with a scorpion in the bottle?

Whisky distillers pull out all sorts of tricks to create new flavors. In Southeast Asia, though, people take things to the extreme by adding exotic animals to whisky.

There are plenty of ways to influence a whisky’s taste. Early in the process, you can peat the barley to build a smoky character into the final spirit. The degree of distillation and the type of cask used for maturation also have a major impact on flavor.

What Scottish and Irish distilleries generally don’t do is add anything to the spirit after distillation. In some Asian countries, however, that’s a different story. There you can find some truly unusual bottles, like whisky with a scorpion inside.

And we’re not talking about ground-up scorpion mixed into the liquid. We mean a whole scorpion, clearly visible in the bottle. Not exactly the dram for anyone who gets the creeps from venomous critters.

It doesn’t stop at scorpions, either. Other animals turn up in whisky as well. In Thailand, for instance, there’s a whisky that contains not only a black scorpion, but also a cobra. A ginseng root is added as the proverbial cherry on top to complete the concoction. You can find this “delicacy” in countries like Cambodia, too.

Whisky is usually enjoyed to unwind, savor the flavor, or warm up on a cold winter’s day. According to people in Southeast Asia, the exotic versions of whisky serve other purposes as well.

Whisky with scorpions and snakes is said to act as an aphrodisiac and to have medicinal properties. It’s touted, for example, as a remedy for back pain and sore muscles.

For now, we’ll just stick to tiger balm.

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