Drink

by Iain Gately

  Interestingly, and despite their tested excellence, for most of the life of wines such as Ridge Vineyards Monte Bello ’71 it had been impossible for most Americans to obtain them through the mail. The sale of alcohol followed the repeal era three-tier system, composed of producers or importers who sold to wholesalers, who sold to retailers, who sold to individuals. Sending wine through the mail or via a common carrier direct to a drinker was illegal in twenty-three states and a felony in some, including Florida, Kentucky, and Utah. This meant that drink manufacturers were effectively excluded from selling via catalogs or on the Internet, and the issue was tested in the Supreme Court in 2005. Its justices held that states must allow direct shipment by out-of-state wineries if (indicative of a lingering nervousness about alcohol) they allowed them by instate wineries. The new ruling had been recognized by thirty-three states by January 2007, enabling many Americans, at last, to order their own country’s wines direct. Small vineyards without national distribution and connoisseurs living far from their favorite wineries may now trade to their mutual satisfaction, unless they live in such recalcitrant states as Kentucky, where anyone caught ordering non-Kentuckian wine more than once still faces a felony charge.

  A three-tier retail system was not the only hangover from the Volstead era in Kentucky. As of August 2005, 54 out of its 120 counties prohibited the sale of alcohol, and a further 36 had restrictions of some kind on its retailing, including 19 where residents might only drink on golf courses. Indeed, and unbeknownst to many Americans, Prohibition lingers on in many parts of their native land, principally in the southern states. Most of the northern counties of Alabama are still dry, as are nearly half of all counties in Mississippi, and Tennessee and Texas both still harbor large numbers of alcohol-free jurisdictions. Ironically, Lynchburg, Tennessee, home to Jack Daniel’s whiskey, is dry. The grandchildren of the Prohibition era find such dinosaurs amazing, not to say infuriating, when they chance across them. Here, for example, are the reactions of the writer Tucker Max to discovering that a part of the country he loved forbade the sale of booze:

  I had heard about “dry counties” before, but they were still an abstract and foreign concept to me. I thought of them as silly anachronisms from a long distant prohibitionist past, something only found in the pages of National Geographic. I was wrong. Evidently, every county along I-75 from Richmond, KY, to the Tennessee border is dry. THIS INFURIATED ME. I almost got into a fight with the redneck checkout woman when she told me I have 40 more miles to go before I could buy liquor.

  “HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO ARRIVE DRUNK IF YOU WON’T SELL ME LIQUOR?? WHAT KIND OF BARBARISM IS THIS??”

  Fortunately for the rising generation of drinkers, dry areas, gradually, are being submerged. The Pacific Coast has been all wet since 2003 when Monmouth, Oregon, voted to license drinking. Most of the former temperance heartlands in the Midwest and Northeast have also been flooded, including such shining examples of self-denial as Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, which had been dry since its foundation by Zebulon Cooper in 1789. Slippery Rock went under in 2001, for entirely commercial reasons: It wished to attract business and development but felt these would not come unless there were places to drink after work. Paradoxically, the same logic was used in Bridgewater, the last dry town in Connecticut, as a reason for staying arid. According to an official of the Bridgewater Historical Society, “We’re not looking for development. . . . We’re not looking for a way to bring bigger, better businesses to this place.” Anyone from Bridgewater wanting a drink must travel four miles out of town, despite the fact that it contains a winery within its jurisdiction. There remain other notable strongholds of temperance in the East, whose persistence might have given the pioneers of Prohibition some consolation. Ocean City, New Jersey, founded in 1879 by a quartet of Methodist ministers as a “moral seaside resort,” is still dry; a liquor barn sits just outside the city limits on the only causeway in. Consolations aside, a metaphorical stake was driven through Wayne Wheeler’s dead heart in January 2006 when Westerville, Ohio, former headquarters of the Anti-Saloon League and once known as the “dry capital of the world,” licensed the sale of beer for the first time since 1875. The first legal glass for 130 years fetched $150 at auction. Its buyer toasted his fellow citizens before he drank to the end of more than a century of paranoia over alcohol. “Here’s to a new tradition in Westerville,” he said.

  From a cultural perspective, $150 is a small price to pay for the reintroduction to Westerville of a substantial chunk of heritage. Alcohol has been one of the building blocks of Western civilization and continues to be an important ingredient of both our diet and our culture. While its contribution to nutrition is often overlooked, it is nonetheless significant. In 2004, average American per capita consumption of alcohol was 2.24 gallons, equating to 67,524 calories every year, or about 7.4 percent of each drinker’s annualized RDI (recommended intake of calories). In addition to sustenance, alcohol also provides an aesthetic experience—drinking is an affair of the palate, as much as of the stomach or the head: A chilled beer, a glass of fine wine, a shot of bourbon, all stimulate the senses in unique and pleasing ways. Moreover, the power of alcoholic drinks to lessen inhibitions and facilitate self-expression, continues to associate their consumption with friendship, and artists in every medium still pay homage to their liquid muses. Finally, there is yet a place for intoxication in modern society. We resort to the bottle when our passions are high—we drink to celebrate, and to drown our sorrows.

  Attempts to ban alcohol in the West have all, like the noble experiment of Prohibition, failed. As the legend of Bacchus illustrates, drink must be accommodated within society, for, like the Greek god, it also has a dark side, and if its production and consumption are forced underground, chaos results: Witness recent conditions in Russia, where excessive drinking has had a substantial negative impact on the well-being of an entire nation. However, in most countries with long-standing drinking traditions, moderate tippling has a positive effect on health. Although the mechanisms by which alcohol increases longevity when taken in small, if regular, doses have yet to be determined, its beneficial side effects are readily apparent: It eases the stresses of coexistence, it helps us to relax when we are tense, it restores life’s luster when we feel sad.

  There seems to be a universal desire to add ceremony to the consumption of alcohol—to acknowledge that under its influence, drinkers will let down their guard and say what they really think. In consequence, most cultures have specific phrases or words to accompany the raising of a glass, whose usual sentiment is to wish good health to the drinker and his or her companions. Whatever your background, whatever your poison, let me propose a toast for sharing the journey of this inspirational, if equivocal, fluid through history: Salud, Kan pei, Chin-chin, Prost, Yum sing, Skol, Slainte, À votre santé, Na zdrowie, The king o’er the water, or just plain Cheers!

  NOTES

  1 THE GRAIN AND THE GRAPE

  1 Ancient beverages: Ancient Wine, The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, Patrick E. McGovern, Princeton University Press, 2003.

  2 Jiahu, “China”: Fermented beverages of pre- and proto-historic China, Cheng, Zhijun Zhao, Changsui Wang Moreau, Alberto Nuñez, Eric D. Butrym, Michael P. Richards, Chen-shan Wang, Guangsheng Fa, Patrick E. McGovern, Juzhong Zhang, Jigen Tang, Zhiqing Zhang, Gretchen R. Hall, Robert A., published online December, 8, 2004.

  5 “Enkidu knew nothing”: The Epic of Gilgamesh, Trans. Maureen Gallery Kovacs, Stanford University Press, 1989.

  8 “vineyard of the red house”: Gods, Men and Wine, William Younger, The Wine and Food Society Limited, London, 1966, p. 33.

  8 Egyptian beer: “Beer from the early dynasties (3500-3400 B.C.) of Upper Egypt, detected by archaeochemical methods,” Salwa A. Maksoud, M. Nabil El Hadidi, and Wafaa Mahrous Amer, Vegetation History and Archaeobotany , Vol. 3 No. 4, December 1994.

  5 Heirakonpolis interactive dig online at: www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/.

  9 Ska
ra Brae: “Barley, Malt, and Ale in the Neolithic,” Merryn Dineley, BAR International Series, Vol. 1213, 2004.

  10 Mayan drinking: The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Mayan Art, Linda Schele and Mary Ellen Miller, Thames & Hudson, London, 1992.

  2 BACCHANAL

  11 “But when Orion and Sirius are come into mid-heaven”: Works and Days ll, Hesiod, pp. 609-617.

  13 “Wine is like fire”: II 4 Deipnosophists Athenaeus, Trans C. D. Yonge, London, 1854.

  13 “There is a wine which Saprian”: 1 Yonge, I 52.

  13 “drive men out of their senses”: 1 Yonge

  15 “But even so it was the remark and not its target that became notorious”: 1 Courtesans and fishcakes, the consuming passions of classical Athens, James Davidson, Fontana Press, London, 1998, p. 151.

  16 “If with water you fill up your glasses”: Yonge, II 9.

  16 “But that water is undeniably nutritious”: Yonge, II 26.

  16 “Wine lays bare”: Yonge, II 6.

  16 “so that it may not be discovered what sort of a person you really are, and that you are not what you pretend to be”: Yonge, X 31.

  17 “This is the monument of that great drinker”: Yonge, X 48.

  17 “and in every kind of luxury and amusement”: Diodorus of Sicily, quoted in Bacchus, A Biography, Andrew Dalby, The British Museum Press, London, 2003, p. 51.

  19 “ritual dance of the tragos”: Ibid., p. 81.

  20 “When a man has reached the age of forty”: Plato Laws, from Yonge.

  23 Ithyphalloi: Wine in the Ancient World, Charles Seltman, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London, 1957, p. 150.

  24 “a man of violent temper”: Yonge, X 46.

  24 “If the wine be moderately boiled”: Yonge, X 34.

  25 “If an important decision is to be made, they discuss the question when they are drunk”: Herodotus, The Histories, Penguin Classics edition, Trans. Aubrey de Selincourt, London, 2003, p. 62.

  25 “wanted the tales of the god’s wanderings”: quoted in Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, London, 1994.

  26 “Of those who entered for the prize”: Yonge, X 48.

  Euripides and Dionysus: R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Cambridge University

  Press, 1948.

  3 IN VINO VERITAS

  29 “care of armies”: The History of Rome, Livy, Book 39.13.

  29 “at Rome, women”: Natural History, Pliny, Trans. John F. Healy, Penguin Classics, 1991.

  31 “Whither, O Bacchus”: Horace, Odes III xxv, Odes and Epistles, Trans. C. E. Bennett, Loeb Classical Library, 1978.

  31 “from the moment Liber”: Horace, Epistles XIX.

  31 “Let Moderation Reign”: Horace, Odes xxvii.

  31 “It unlocks secrets”: Horace, Epistles V.

  33 “There’s not a man been born”: 1 The Satyricon, Petronius, Trans. William Arrowsmith, Meridian Classics, New York, 1959, p. 55.

  33 “assumed the entire garb of Bacchus”: Athenaeus, Trans. Charles Burton Gulick, William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1927: IV, 148. Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella: On Agriculture (1954), Translated by E. S. Forster and Edward H. Heffner (Loeb Classical Library).

  34 “Wines from Pompeii”: Pliny, p. 70.

  34 “without putting on a stitch of clothing”: Ibid.

  36 “Whatever Fame sings of”: 1 Epigrams, Martial Trans. Walter C. A. Ker, Loeb Classical Library, 1979.

  36 “Daedalus, now thou art”: Epigrams, Martial VIII.

  37 “They gained so rapidly in corpulence”: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities.

  37 “liquor drunk in the houses of the rich”: Gulick IV 151.

  38 “savage people of great bravery”: XV Book II De Bello Gallico, Julius Caesar, Trans. W. A. MacDevitt, Project Gutenberg etext.

  38 “a liquor prepared”: Tacitus, Germania, The Oxford Translation Revised— Project Gutenberg etext.

  39 “Who the first inhabitants”: Tacitus, Agricola the Oxford Translation Revised-Project Gutenberg etext.

  40 Vindolanda: vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/.

  4 WINE, BLOOD, SALVATION

  44 Justin Martyr: Apologia, Trans. Rev. S. Thelwall, online at www.earlychristianwritings.com.

  45 Clement—pedagogia: Book II Chapter II, online from the Catholic Encycolpedia, www.newadvent.org.

  48 Early Christian ritual: Roots of Christianity, Michael Walsh, Grafton Books, London, 1986.

  5 BARBARIANS

  50 “The public halls were bright, with lofty gables,”: Exeter Book: R. Hamer, London, 1970, a choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse.

  51 barbarian invasions: The Fall of the Roman Empire, Peter Heather, Macmillan, London, 2005 Ausonius, with an English translation, Hugh G. Evelyn-White, W. Heinemann, London, 1919.

  53 “Drinc heil”: 1 Beer and Britannia an Inebriated History of Britain, Peter Haydon, Sutton Publishing Limited, Stroud, 2001, p. 20.

  54 beor: “Old Englsh Beor,” Christine E. Fell, Leeds Studies in English, New Series Vol. VIII 1975.

  56 “So his mind turned”: Beowulf, a verse translation, Seamus Heaney, W. W. Norton & Company Inc., New York, 2002.

  58 hemina—Benedictine rule: XL-of the quantity of food and drink for Benedictine Rules see www.osb.org.

  58 “Ale is drunk around Loch Cuain”: 1 Beer, the Story of the Pint, Martyn Cornell, 2003, Headline Book Publishing, London, p. 29.

  59 “If anyone because of drunkenness”: Gildas, de excidio, Trans. J. A. Giles, G. Bell & Sons, London, 1891.

  59 “They had placed in their midst”: 1 The Barbarian’s Beverage-a History of Beer in Ancient Europe, Max Nelson, Routledge, Oxford, 2005, p. 95.

  61 Colloquy of Aelfric: Garmonsway, G. N., ed. Colloquy. Ælfric. 2nd ed. 1939, University of Exeter, 1999.

  61 “pregnant women should not drink to excess”: Fell, p. 86

  63 “It was the custom at that time”: Heirnskringla, the Ynglinga Saga, Snorri Sturlson, Trans, Samuel Laing, London, 1844, 41.

  6 ISLAM

  65 “How I wish”: Abu Nuwa: A Genius of Poetry, Philip F. Kennedy, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2005 p. 60.

  65 “perfect physical specimins”: “Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah,” James E. Montgomery, online at www.uib.no/jais/v003/montgo.1.pdf.

  67-68 Koran references:

  2;219—“They ask concerning wine and gambling

  (5;90) “Strong drink, games of chance, idols and divining arrows

  78;31: “As for the righteous”

  47:15) “rivers of wine, delicious to drinkers”

  69 “celebrated for refusing”: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5, Edward Gibbon, Everyman’s Library Edition, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. London, p. 334.

  69 “Drink the wine, though forbidden”: Kennedy, p. 15.

  70 “I wish that I were the Eucharist”: Ibid, p. 56.

  70 “Quick to your morning drink”: Ibid., p. 61.

  70 “she is so antique that”: Ibid., p. 71

  71 “A wine both frisky and quiet”: Ibid., p. 66.

  73 “Tonight I will make a tun of wine”: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Trans. Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs, Allen Lane, London, 1979, p. 77.

  73 “They say there is Paradise with the houris and the River”: Ibid., p. 67.

  74 “Vladimir listened to them”: The Story of Wine, Hugh Johnson, Mandarin, London, 1989, p. 99.

  7 BREWS FOR BREAKFAST

  77 “as holy writ saith”: The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Project Gutenberg etext.

  78 “The people of the region”: Alcohol in western society from antiquity to 1800, Gregory Austin, 1985, Clio Press Ltd, Oxford, p. 94.

  79 “the largest vine-growing establishment”: Johnson, p. 138.

  79 “send ships forthwith”: Alcohol, Sex and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, A. Lynn Martin, Palgrave, Hampshire, 2001, p. 6.

  82 “almost every other household”: Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, Judith M. Bennet, Oxford University Press,
1996, p. 19.

  84 “in the public house to die”: Wine, Women and Song, John Adddington Symonds, Chatto & Windus, London, 1925.

  86 “When by law or custom of the Church men fast”: Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, G. R. Owst, Cambridge University Press, 1933, p. 435.

  87 “paler than that of the infirm”: Ibid., p. 443.

  87 “Thou arte lord of great power”: Ibid., p. 310.

  88 “By God’s blood, this day is unhappy!”: Ibid., p. 423.

  88 “Hick the horse dealer and Hugh the needle seller”: Piers Plowman Passus 5, Trans. Donald and Rachel Attwater, Ed. Rachel Attwater, Everyman’s Library, J. M. Dent, London, 1957.

  General:

  Margery Kirkbride James, Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade, Ed. Elspeth

  M. Veale, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971.

  Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, CUP, 1989.

  8 A NEW WORLD OF DRINKING

  91 “it truly is most friendly”: Austin p. 97.

  91 “There is undoubtedly something to be said for inebriation”: Ibid., p. 97.

  91 “Marvelous medicament”: Ibid., p. 96.

  92 “In view of the fact”: Ibid., p. 140.

  92 “It eases diseases coming of cold.”: Ibid., p. 141.

  96 “up to now no tribe has been found”: Alcohol in Ancient Mexico, Henry J. Bruman, University of Utah Press, 2000, p. 48.

  96 “every third day, the women”: Ibid.

  96 “have solemn festivals of drunkenness”: Ibid., p. 38.

  97 “dance after drinking repeatedly”: Ibid., p. 92.

  98 “there are no dead dogs, nor a bomb,”: Ibid., p. 17.

  98 “Once they were all intoxicated they began to sing;”: A History of Ancient Mexico, Bernardino Sahagun.