A History of the World in 6 Glasses

by Tom Standage

  While the richest Romans drank the finest wines, poorer citizens drank lesser vintages, and so on down the social ladder. So fine was the calibration of wine with status that drinkers at a Roman banquet, or convivium, would be served different wines depending on their positions in society. This was just one of the many ways in which the convivium differed from its Greek prototype, the symposion. Where the symposion was, at least in theory, a forum in which the participants drank as equals from a shared krater, pursuing pleasure and perhaps philosophical enlightenment, the convivium was an opportunity to emphasize social divisions, not to set them aside in a temporary alcoholic haze.

  Like the Greeks, the Romans drank their wine in the "civi­lized" manner, namely, mixed with water, which was brought into their cities via elaborate aqueducts. Each drinker, however, usually mixed wine and water for himself, and the communal krater was, it seems, rarely used. The seating arrangement was less egalitarian than that of the symposion too, since some seats were associated with higher status than others. The con­vivium reflected the Roman class system, which was based on the notion of patrons and clients. Client citizens depended on patrons, who in turn depended on patrons of their own, and each patron provided benefits (such as a financial allowance, legal advice, and political influence) to clients in return for specific duties. Clients were expected to accompany their patrons to the Forum each morning, for example; the size of each patron's entourage was a sign of his power. If a patron invited a client to a convivium, however, the client would often find himself being served inferior food and wine to those of other guests and might find himself the butt of the other guests' jokes. Pliny the Younger, writing in the late first century CE, described a dinner at which fine wine was served to the host and his friends, second-rate wine to other guests, and third-rate wine to freedmen (former slaves).

  These coarser, cheaper wines were often adulterated with various additives, either to serve as preservatives or to conceal the fact that they had spoiled. Pitch, which was sometimes used to seal amphorae, was occasionally added to wine as a preservative, as were small quantities of salt or seawater, a practice inherited from the Greeks. Columella, a Roman agricultural writer of the first century CE, claims that when used carefully, such preservatives could be added to wine without affecting its taste. They could even improve it; one of his recipes, for a white wine fermented with seawater and fenugreek, produces a sharp, nutty wine very similar to a modern dry sherry. Mulsum, a mixture of wine and honey, emerged as a fashionable aperitif during the reign of Tiberius in the early first century, while rosatum was a similar drink flavored with roses. But herbs, honey, and other additives were more commonly added to lesser wines to conceal their imperfections. Some Romans even carried herbs and other flavorings with them while traveling, to improve the taste of bad wine. While modern wine drinkers may turn up their noses at the Greek and Roman use of additives, it is not that different from the modern use of oak as a flavoring agent, often to make otherwise unremarkable wines more palatable.

  Wine drinkers at an elaborate Roman feast

  Below these adulterated wines was posca, a drink made by mixing water with wine that had turned sour and vinegarlike. Posca was commonly issued to Roman soldiers when better wines were unavailable, for example, during long campaigns. It was, in effect, a form of portable water-purification technology for the Roman army. When a Roman soldier offered Jesus Christ a sponge dipped in wine during his crucifixion, the wine in question would have been posca. Finally, at the bottom of the Roman scale of wines was lor a, the drink normally served to slaves, which hardly qualified as wine at all. It was made by soaking and pressing the skins, seeds, and stalks left over from wine making to produce a thin, weak, and bitter wine. From the legendary Falernian down to lowly lora, there was a wine for every rung on the social ladder.

  Wine and Medicine

  One of the greatest wine tastings in history took place around 170 CE in the imperial cellars in Rome. Here, at the center of the known world, was the finest collection of wines available anywhere, a collection built up by successive emperors for whom cost was no object. Into these cool, damp cellars, pierced with shafts of sunlight, descended Galen, personal physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius, on a singular mission: to find the best wine in the world.

  Galen was born in Pergamon (now Bergama, in modern Turkey), a city in the Greek-speaking eastern part of the Roman Empire. As a youth, he studied medicine in Alexandria and then traveled in Egypt, where he learned about Indian and African remedies. Building on the earlier ideas of Hippocrates, Galen believed that illness was the result of an imbalance of the body's four "humors": blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Surplus humors could accumulate in particular parts of the body and were associated with particular temperaments; a buildup of black bile in the spleen, for example, made one melancholic, sleepless, and irritable. The humors could be brought back into balance using techniques such as bloodletting. Different foodstuffs, which were deemed to be hot or cold, wet or dry, could also influence the humors: Cold and wet foods were thought to produce phlegm; hot and dry foods, yellow bile. This systematic approach, promoted by Galen's voluminous writings, was hugely influential and was the basis of Western medicine for more than a thousand years. That it was utter nonsense only became clear in the nineteenth century.

  Galen's interest in wine was mainly, though not entirely, professional. As a young doctor he had treated gladiators, using wine to disinfect their wounds, a common practice at the time. Wine, like other foodstuffs, could also be used to regulate the humors. Galen regularly prescribed wine and wine-based remedies for the emperor. Within the framework of the theory of humors, wine was regarded as being hot and dry, so that it promoted yellow bile and reduced phlegm. This meant wine was to be avoided by anyone suffering from a fever (a hot and dry disease) but could be taken as a remedy for a cold (a cold and wet disease). The better the wine, Galen believed, the more medically effective it was; "always try to get the best," he advised in his writings. Since he was treating the emperor, Galen wanted to ensure that he was prescribing the finest possible vintage. Accompanied by a cellarman to open and reseal the amphorae, he duly headed straight for the Falernian.

  "Since all that is best from every part of the world finds its way to the great ones of the earth," Galen wrote, "from their excellence must be chosen the very best for the greatest of them all. So, in execution of my duty, I deciphered the vintage marks on the amphorae of every Falernian wine and submitted to my palette every wine over 20 years old. I kept on until I found a wine without a trace of bitterness. An ancient wine which has not lost its sweetness is the best of all." Alas, Galen did not record the year of the Faustian Falernian vintage he eventually deemed most suitable for medical use by the emperor. But having identified it, he insisted that Marcus Aurelius should use that wine, and no other, for medical purposes. This included washing down his daily medicine, a universal antidote designed to protect the emperor against illness generally, and poisoning in particular.

  The notion of such an antidote had been pioneered in the first century BCE by Mithradates, the king of Pontus, a region in what is now northern Turkey. He conducted a series of experiments, in which dozens of prisoners were given various deadly poisons, in order to determine the most effective antidote in each case. Eventually, he settled on a mixture of forty-one antidote ingredients, to be taken daily. It tasted disgusting (diced viper's flesh was one ingredient) but meant that Mithradates no longer had to worry about being poisoned. He was eventually overthrown by his son. The story goes that, holed up in a tower, the king tried to kill himself but, ironically, found that no poison had any effect. Finally, he had to ask one of his guards to stab him to death.

  Galen extended Mithradates' recipe considerably. His recipe for theriac—a universal antidote to poisons, and a general cure-all—contained seventy-one ingredients, including ground-up lizards, poppy juice, spices, incense, juniper berries, ginger, hemlock seed, raisins, fennel, aniseed, and l
iquorice. It is hard to imagine that Marcus Aurelius was able to appreciate the taste of Falernian after swallowing such a mixture, but he did as his emi nent doctor told him, and washed it down with the world's greatest wine.

  Why Christians Drink Wine and Muslims Do Not

  Marcus Aurelius died in 180 CE, not from poisoning but from illness. For the last week of his life he consumed only theriac and Falernian wine. The end of his reign, a period of relative peace, stability, and prosperity, is often taken to mark the end of the golden age of Rome. There followed a succession of short-lived emperors, almost none of whom died of natural causes, and who did their best to defend the empire from the onslaught of barbarians from all sides. Lying on his deathbed in 395 CE, the emperor Theodosius I divided the empire into western and eastern halves, each to be ruled by one of his sons, in an attempt to make it easier to defend. But the western empire soon crumbled: The Visigoths, a Germanic tribe, sacked Rome in 410 CE and then established a kingdom covering much of Spain and western Gaul. Rome was plundered again in 455 CE by the Vandals, and before long the western empire had been carved up into a multitude of separate kingdoms.

  According to centuries-old Roman and Greek prejudices, the influx of the northern tribes ought to have displaced the civilized wine-drinking culture in favor of beer-drinking barbarism. Yet despite their reputation as vulgar beer lovers, the tribes of northern Europe, where the climate was less suitable for viticulture, had nothing against wine. Of course, many aspects of Roman life were swept away, trade was disrupted, and the availability of wine in some regions diminished; Romanized Britons seem to have switched from wine back to beer as the empire crumbled, for example. But there was also cultural fusion between Roman, Christian, and Germanic traditions as new rulers took over from the Romans. One example of continuity was the widespread survival of Mediterranean wine-drinking culture, which was deep-rooted enough to survive the passing of its Greek and Roman parents. The Visigothic law code, for instance, drawn up between the fifth and seventh centuries, specified detailed punishments for anyone who damaged a vineyard—hardly what you would expect of barbarians.

  Another factor in maintaining the wine-drinking culture was its close association with Christianity, the rise of which during the first millennium elevated wine to a position of utmost symbolic significance. According to the Bible, Christ's first miracle, at the beginning of his ministry, was the transformation of six jars of water into wine at a wedding near the Sea of Galilee. Christ told several parables about wine and often likened himself to a vine: "I am the vine, you are the branches," he told his followers. Christ's offering of wine to his disciples at the Last Supper then led to its role in the Eucharist, the central Christian ritual in which bread and wine symbolize Christ's body and blood. This was, in many ways, a continuation of the tradition established by members of the cults of Dionysus and his Roman incarnation, Bacchus. The Greek and Roman wine gods, like Christ, were associated with wine-making miracles and resurrection after death; their worshipers, like Christians, regarded wine drinking as a form of sacred communion. Yet there are also marked differences. The Christian ritual is nothing like its Dionysian counterpart, and while the former involves very small quantities of wine, the latter calls for large quantities drunk in excess.

  It has been suggested that the Christian church's need for communion wine played an important role in keeping wine production going during the dark ages after the fall of Rome. That is an exaggeration, however, despite the close links between Christianity and wine. The amount of wine required for the Eucharist was miniscule, and by 1100 it was increasingly the case that only the celebrating priest drank wine from the chalice, while the congregation just received bread. Most wine produced by vineyards on church land, or attached to monasteries, was for everyday consumption by those in religious orders. Benedictine monks, for example, received a daily ration of about half a pint of wine. In some cases, the sale of wine made on church land was a valuable source of income.

  Although the wine culture remained reasonably intact in Christian Europe, drinking patterns changed dramatically in other parts of the former Roman world, as a result of the rise of Islam. Its founder, the prophet Muhammad, was born around 570 CE. At the age of forty he felt himself called to become a prophet, and experienced a series of visions during which the Koran was revealed to him by Allah. Muhammad's new teachings made him unpopular in Mecca, a city whose prosperity depended on the traditional Arab religion, so he fled to Medina, where his following grew. By the time of Muhammad's death in 632 CE, Islam had become the dominant faith in most of Arabia. A century later, his adherents had conquered all of Persia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Syria, Egypt and the rest of the northern African coast, and most of Spain. Muslims' duties include frequent prayer, almsgiving, and abstention from alcoholic drinks.

  Tradition has it that Muhammad's proscription of alcohol followed a fight between two of his disciples during a drinking party. When the prophet sought divine guidance about how to prevent such incidents, Allah's reply was uncompromising: "Wine and games of chance . . . are abominations devised by Satan. Avoid them, so that you may prosper. Satan seeks to stir up enmity and hatred among you by means of wine and gambling, and to keep you from remembrance of Allah and from your prayers. Will you not abstain from them?" The punishment for anyone who broke this rule was duly set at forty lashes. It seems likely, however, that the Muslim ban on alcohol was also the result of wider cultural forces. With the rise of Islam, power shifted away from the peoples of the Mediterranean coast and toward the desert tribes of Arabia. These tribes expressed their superiority over the previous elites by replacing wheeled vehicles with camels, chairs and tables with cushions, and by banning the consumption of wine, that most potent symbol of sophistication. In so doing, Muslims signaled their rejection of the old notions of civilization. Wine's central role in the rival creed of Christianity also predisposed Muslims against it; even its medical use was banned. After much argument the prohibition was extended to other alcoholic drinks too. As Islam spread, so did the prohibition of alcohol.

  The ban on alcohol was, however, enforced more rigorously in some places than in others. Wine was celebrated in the work of Abu Nouwas and other Arab poets, and production continued in Spain and Portugal, for example, even though it was technically illegal. And the fact that Muhammad himself was said to have enjoyed lightly fermented date wine led some Spanish Muslims to argue that his objection was not so much to wine itself as to overindulgence. Only wine made from grapes had been explicitly banned, presumably on the basis of its strength; therefore, grape wine ought to be allowed, provided it was diluted so that its strength did not exceed that of date wine. This fancy interpretative footwork was controversial but did provide some leeway. Indeed, wine-drinking parties akin to Greek symposia seem to have been popular in some parts of the Muslim world. Mixing wine with water, after all, reduced its potency considerably and seemed to conform with Muhammad's vision of paradise: a garden in which the righteous "shall drink of a pure wine, tempered with the water of Tasnim, a spring at which the favored will refresh themselves."

  The advance of Islam into Europe was halted in 732 CE at the Battle of Tours, in central France, where the Arab troops were defeated by Charles Martel, the most charismatic of the princes of the Frankish kingdom that roughly corresponds with modern France. This battle, one of the turning points in world history, marked the high-water mark of Arab influence in Europe. The subsequent crowning of Martel's grandson, Charlemagne, as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 CE heralded the start of a period of consolidation and eventual reinvigoration of European culture.

  The King of Drinks

  "Woe is me!" wrote Alcuin, a scholar who was one of Charlemagne's advisers, to a friend during a visit to England in the early ninth century CE. "The wine is gone from our wineskins and bitter beer rages in our bellies. And because we have it not, drink in our name and lead a joyful day." Alcuin's lament illustrates that wine was scarce in England, as it was elsewhere in no
rthern Europe. In these parts, where wine could not be produced locally but had to be imported, beer and mead (and a hybrid drink in which cereal grains were fermented with honey) predominated instead. The distinction between beer in northern Europe and wine in the south persists to this day. Modern European drinking patterns crystallized during the middle of the first millennium and were largely determined by the reach of Greek and Roman influences.

  Wine drinking, usually in moderation and with meals, still predominates in the south of Europe, within the former boundaries of the Roman Empire. In the north of Europe beyond the reach of Roman rule, beer drinking, typically without the accompaniment of food, is more common. Today, the world's leading producers of wine are France, Italy, and Spain; and the people of Luxembourg, France, and Italy are the leading consumers of wine, drinking an average of around fifty-five liters per person per year. The countries where the most beer is consumed, in contrast, would mostly have been regarded as barbarian territory by the Romans: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Britain, and Ireland.

  Greek and Roman attitudes toward wine, themselves founded on earlier Near Eastern traditions, have survived in other ways, too, and have spread around the world. Wherever alcohol is drunk, wine is regarded as the most civilized and cultured of drinks. In those countries, wine, not beer, is served at state banquets and political summits, an illustration of wine's enduring association with status, power, and wealth.