Booze Traveler

2014

Seasons & Episodes

  • 4
  • 3
  • 2
  • 1
8.3| TV-PG| en| More Info
Released: 24 November 2014 Canceled
Producted By: Karga Seven Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.travelchannel.com/shows/booze-traveler
Info

Actor/adventurer Jack Maxwell learned a lot working in South Boston bars, and one lesson stood out: Enjoy a couple of drinks with a stranger, and the whole world opens up. Those experiences inspired "Booze Traveler," which follows Maxwell to various countries to quench his curiosity about what people drink, why, and the tales it prompts. In Armenia, Belize, Lithuania, Mongolia, Nepal and elsewhere, Maxwell learns its intoxicating traditions, meets with locals, joins in activities, and even helps with the alcohol-making process. He finds a unique drink, makes friends and shares stories in each spot.

Genre

Documentary

Watch Online

Booze Traveler (2014) is now streaming with subscription on Discovery+

Cast

Director

Production Companies

Karga Seven Pictures

Booze Traveler Videos and Images
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Booze Traveler Audience Reviews

Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!
Tacticalin An absolute waste of money
Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
richardlichman I had watched every episode of this show. It combined two of my favorite parts of life: travel and drink. My brother was in a recent episode. He told me that Jack has a guy on his crew whose job it is to make fake drinks to look like whatever he's supposed to be drinking in that segment. What a poser. This is worse than when I found out that Santa Claus was fake and that Richard Nixon wasn't.
AudioFileZ The Booze Traveler is Jack Maxwell's particular slant on a travelogue show. Jack often takes roads less traveled too ending up in remote and exotic locales. The common denominator is what the locals imbibe alcoholically. It's a unique mixture. It leans heavy to local culture as filtered through the indigenous drinks. Hopscotching through whatever country it blends education and entertainment with the element of a travelogue show. Jack Maxwell is a personable host. Jack's on-screen persona is what you might call "uber chipper". If he's faking he's giving it everything. Maxwell seems to love his work even when he's in, for lack of better terms, quite depressing and backward cultures. For pure fun the similar show "Chug" is more pure entertainment, but Maxwell's take on world drinking is actually more educational while still retaining his ever present optimism. I've watched more than half of the available episodes and I'm hooked. I feel I'm seeing things I'd never be able to experience in one lifetime as well as gaining a bit of insight of how besides math alcohol is universal. If I had to recommend one episode it would have to be the season two number 3 one where Jack goes to Finland. Not only is Finland wholly a unique and mystical place but it has the greatest cocktail mixing scene of all time at the end of the episode. The drink called "sudden death" is a spectacle. It makes the bottle juggling scene in the movie "Cocktail" look as stupid and baseless as it really is. This is one you've got to see!Booze Traveler might be primarily for the drink enthusiast, but it has a richness of culture that separates it from the small genre it lives in. Jack is the prefect host as he is almost too genial and upbeat, but certainly a man on a mission who loves his work. IN some ways this is actually both art and educational while being quite fun to watch, a rare combination indeed and not unlike a magic elixir bringing disparate people together in a unique way. I think this show rocks!
Anna Faktorovich Excerpt from Cinematic Codes Review: Spring 2016 Issue: for visuals see: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/ccr/film-reviews-spring-2016/Travel Channel's Booze Traveler seems to be the networks answer to losing Anthony Bourdain to CNN, and it's a pretty good deal. Initially, I was concerned that Jack Maxwell, the host and a career bartender from Boston, could pull off an entire series about booze, as opposed to Bourdain's focus on all foods. But before the end of the first episode on Turkey, I was hooked and curious to see what else Jack would have to say about alcohol. Each episode introduces a few curious drinks from the far ends of the earth that I have never heard of. I drink alcohol about once in two years, but I don't think this show is intent on selling these drinks to viewers. "I didn't know I could drink unfermented horse milk," Jack says in the Mongolian episode. He also ends up drinking alcohol made by chewing and spitting the components out, and other unappetizing exotic treats. I really liked goat's milk when I was a child and had some at a farm without any additives or purification: it was sweet and buttery, so I can imagine how these types of drinks might taste great, but watching them through the TV screen inspire awe rather than thirst. This is a show for people who enjoy learning about foreign cultures, customs and drinks, and not a show for alcoholics to find a new drink to get at their local bar. Fig. 27. Rasheed Sali, left, and Jack Maxwell at a resurrected grape farm in Bozcaada, Turkey. Season 1, Episode 1.Jack takes viewers through the various stages of alcohol production and preparation. In the still above, he is with Rasheed Sali on a grape farm in Turkey, smelling the ripening grapes to describe how they are preferential to regular grapes used in most modern wines. Fig. 28. Jack Maxwell (right) with a boat operator in Peru. Season 1, Episode 2.There are many shots of Jack traveling through dense jungle, roaring rivers and seas, and hiking up mountains, so that somebody who is only interested in finding places to visit will find plenty of sites to travel to. In Episode 2, Jack Maxwell narrates: "Peru is really magical." The camera pans to a shot of a scorpion. "And by that I mean, maybe a little witchy. You can't throw a rock without hitting a shaman here. And the landscape is hypnotic and extreme…" As he says this, goats are shown hopping down a rocky incline. Most of the narration pokes fun at the absurdities of international peculiarities, while also expressing a deep love for these charming oddities. Fig. 29. Canelazo factory on the Amazon River in Peru, with the factory equipment and sugarcane in the background, the operators on the right, and Jack on the left.The scenes of Jack picking sugarcane, and then helping to pull it through complex machinery at a Canelazo outdoorish factory on the Amazon River in Peru were stunning. Each of these epic projects to help with every step of an alcohol brewing process before partaking in the drink is inspiring, and Jack frequently says so. Fig. 30. Yohanah, owner and barman (right), the Viking warrior-impersonator and hair dresser (middle), and Jack (left) with a giant traditional Icelandic meal, twice-smoked lamb's foot, outside of Reykjavik, Iceland. Season 1, Episode 5.In the Iceland episode, Jack joins a group of Viking impersonators for a kind of battle in a parking garage. He gets hit across the nose with an actually sharp blade of one of the fighters, leaving a small scar. He says, bravely, that he is glad to have received a real-life battle scar. He is then taken by the leader of these "Vikings" to a neighboring restaurant where he eats a bit of a twice-smoked rubbery lamb's foot, the size of his arm. He complains and obviously looks like he doesn't want to try it, but braves through it for the show. Fig. 31. Jack, with the help of Mongolian migratory herders of the Kimindorz clan in the Khangai Mountains, is trying to milk a horse to make the Mongolian warrior nomad-derived fermented horse milk, airag. Season 1, Episode 6.In Episode 6, Jack narrates to images of him attempting to milk a horse, while its babe is standing nearby to fool the horse into thinking that the little one is the one getting the milk: "Harder than it looks. If the pressure isn't just right, the mare calls bullshit." At this point, the mare in the video makes a move as if to kick him, and makes him lose his balance, all because his "pressure" wasn't exact like the professionals'. This is a very dangerous stunt because migratory Mongols are ranked as the best horse riders on the planet, and they probably made the milking process look easy, while the mare probably could have easily killed Jack with a kick if he made the slightest mistake. It's this sort of bravery to do stunts that nobody sitting at home and watching it would want to actually attempt that makes for great television. Title: Booze Traveler Star and Writer: Jack Maxwell Genre: Reality-TV Series Running Time: 43 min per episode Release: 2014-present
R. Silver I'm giving this show a solid 8 out of 10. Overall, it's a nice travel show and you actually get to learn a lot about different places and cultures - and especially how booze is intertwined in those cultures! Just from a travel standpoint - even if you're not an alcoholic, it's a good show.I like the host but he's probably the reason I didn't give the show a full 10 out of 10. He's a bit too over-the-top "American! Ya!". Like when he's at a table with people in Peru who barely speak English and he's throwing around all this American slang like they're supposed to understand it. Don't know why but that just frustrated me. He could also be a bit more expressive of his gratitude when some of these people go through all their efforts to make him a intricate cocktail or whatever.. (thinking of the Japan episode where this guy makes him this extravagant cocktail in a diamond-shaped glass that he carved first out of purified ice and all he says is "now that's a cocktail"). He's also just looking to get wasted all the time. Again a bit unappreciative to the people he's visiting when he just wants to 'down' their labored or aged alcohol they've opened specially for him.My complaints a bit petty, but overall I really like the show and will continue to watch!