Brandy is a spirit made out of wine. Fruit brandy just uses things besides grapes. It's not really vodka and it's not really wine. It's not a distortion of facts, it could fall under either designation.

> Brandy is a spirit made out of wine. Fruit brandy just uses things besides grapes.

Not really. "Fruit brandy" that people traditionally make and drink in this region is made directly from fruit, without the vine step. There is a brand of it that's made from vine called "vinjak", but that's not the traditional drink everyone is drinking here.

You can also make rakia directly from grapes. That's called "loza" and it hasn't got anything to do with vine.

Yeah, I am grossly oversimplifying things with my definition. For these belts, "wine" is used to describe anything made from fruit. They also mention cider drinking regions of the UK as potentially part of the wine belt.

Really there should probably be a fourth belt covering SE Europe, but as these are only used for informal discussion it doesn't really matter.

There's a real difference between vodka and brandy: most vodka isn't supposed to taste like anything, while all brandy is supposed to taste like something. Maybe you want to divide things differently, but I don't think you're the one to say what the facts are for everyone.

Fair point. The cultural value of rakija as an 'aperitif' drink is also quite different to the bingy approach to vodka, even though you could argue that in reality little separates them.

Someone else also mentioned the 'fruit-based' vs 'potato based' classification and that's all quite valid, but all it does is show that there should be a fourth category of fruit-based hard liquor on that map.