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Wine
Spirits have symbolized multiple, contradictory things to different peoples over time. For the Muslims, who refused to drink alcohol, spirits (even more than other alcoholic beverages) symbolized sin and depravity—the violation of Islamic law. Yet for the Americans of the early 1800s, spirits (such as whiskey and bourbon) had an entirely different symbolic meaning: spirits represented strong opposition to the decadence and tyranny of the Europeans, whose love for wine was well known. It is perhaps this second symbolic meaning that the book portrays as the most influential: while whiskey has lost its specifically anti-European overtones, it continues to imply the same rugged masculinity and adventurousness apparent in the early culture of the United States.
Spirits Quotes in A History of the World in Six Glasses
The A History of the World in Six Glasses quotes below all refer to the symbol of Spirits. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 5
Quotes
It soon became customary for Europeans to present large quantities of alcohol, known as dashee or bizy, as a gift before beginning negotiations with African traders.
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Chapter 6
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Jefferson did his best to cultivate wines in America and advocated a reduction in the excise duty charge on imported wine as “the only antidote to the bane of whiskey.” But his cause was hopeless. Wine was far more expensive, contained less alcohol, and lacked the American connotations of whiskey, an unpretentious drink associated with independence and self-sufficiency.
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Whatever [the origins of the custom of drinking while trading with Indians], this custom was widely exploited by Europeans, who took care to supply large quantities of alcohol when trading with Indians for goods or land.
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Spirits Symbol Timeline in A History of the World in Six Glasses
The timeline below shows where the symbol Spirits appears in A History of the World in Six Glasses. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Introduction: Vital Fluids
...we can understand important things about human culture. He singles out six drinks: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola. Each one was “the defining drink during a pivotal historical period.”
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...world. Another drink that became popular as a result of these trading practices was distilled alcohol—“spirits”—such as brandy, whiskey, and rum. Spirits were an important drink during the Enlightenment, and gave...
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Chapter 5: High Spirits, High Seas
...cure dozens of other afflictions. Aqua vitae was known as “burnt wine,” or, in English, “brandy.”
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...the New World. All of these nations used alcohol to trade with Africa: wine and brandy were accepted forms of currency for slave traders in Africa. As Standage puts it, “brandy...
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On the island of Barbados, colonists experimented with new ways of making spirits, using the new supply of sugar. One new drink, rum, became popular in the 17th...
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Chapter 6: The Drink That Built America
...products were highly expensive to ship across the ocean. This changed in the 1750s, when rum reached North America from the West Indies. By the end of the 18th century, rum...
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The rum business in North America became so influential that Britain began to tax it heavily. In...
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...raising the tax on sugar. Smugglers were punished more harshly, further raising the price of rum. The Sugar Act was the first of a series of highly unpopular acts in the...
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...Washington (knowing full well that Americans were rebelling in part because they’d been deprived of rum) made sure to provide all of his soldiers with adequate rations of rum, along with...
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Following the Revolutionary War, whiskey replaced rum as the dominant drink in America, in part because the sugar supply flowing...
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The stigma of whiskey following the Whiskey Rebellion led to the invention of new whiskey derivatives, such as bourbon,...
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...experienced before their contact with Europeans. Because Americans knew about Native Americans’ love for beer, whiskey, and other forms of alcohol, they used alcohol to “sweeten the deal” when trading with...
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...drink that incorporated the fermented juice of the agave plant. For many hundreds of years, spirits were a fixture of colonial life: spirits inspired colonies to rise up against Britain, and...
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