Fill up your Cup with the Organic Stuff

get rid of hangovers the old-fashioned way

You don’t want to drink that mass-produced booze, folks, trust me. Each year, thousands and thousands of pounds of pesticides and herbicides are sprayed on most commercial crops, especially corn, a main ingredient in many forms of alcohol, according to the Eclectic Institute, an organization created by two naturopathic physicians.

Also, most distilled beverages use unsafe practices that can leave harmful byproducts in your brew, which can make you sick and leave you hung over.

So if you want a great night out, but you want to help Mother Earth out and make it to the morning relatively hangover-free, browse these wares. Organic alcohol: It’s how your great-great grandparents drank!

First find: New Belgium Brewing. Sustainability means a lot to this Fort Collins, Colo., company, maker of Fat Tire ale. Starting in 1998, it was the first brewery to convert to wind energy. They use four barrels of water to produce one barrel of beer—significantly less than the industry average, according to their Web site.

Second find: Vodka enthusiasts should try Rain Vodka, brewed at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky by the Sazarec Company, Inc. These good people go to great lengths to make 100 percent organic vodka. They use white corn organically grown on one 1,500 acre farm in Yale, Ill., as the main ingredient. No pesticide hangovers here! The company also teamed up with a Danish distillery to start making organic flavored vodkas, for those who like a little twist in their drink.

Third find: For you whiskey enthusiasts, check out Da Mhile (pronounced Da Vee Lay) Single Grain Scotch Whisky from the Springbank Distillery in Scotland. The whiskey isn’t chill-filtered or artificially colored, so don’t be surprised if it isn’t that caramel color you love when you pick up the bottle. This is a family-owned distillery where every aspect of making the whiskey—from floor malting to bottling—is done on site, using traditional methods instead of mass-production methods.

Fourth Find: And finally, from London we have Juniper Green Organic Gin. This might be a harder one to find, but it’s worth the search. The company brews in London and only makes up to 500 liters a day using 100 percent organic botanicals to really give it that pine-tree kick. If gin is your thing, track this one down.

Kevin O’leary