What Will You Drink?: Quenching Thirst Through the Ages

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-64293-374-1

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-375-8

What Will You Drink?

Quenching Thirst Through the Ages

© 2020 by Arie L. Melnik

All Rights Reserved

Cover art by Cody Corcoran

Author photo by Neta Fishman

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York • Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

To Dvora,

my love, my partner, and my spiritual leader

Thanks

As in any book of this kind, my work relies also on research of others. At the end of the book I placed a long list of sources that assisted me. I got help also from papers in periodicals and interviews. When writing this book, I used the advice of several knowledgeable persons; some are mentioned in the text, and others provided advice behind the scenes. I am thankful to David Kroyanker, who has tremendous experience in writing books. Thanks are due to Renana Ravitsky Pilzer, who is always happy to answer questions on Jewish subjects. Special thanks I send to my old teacher Nachum Gross, who introduced me to the complexity of written history and showed me the path that leads to better understanding of events. On the development of the production of milk and distribution in the 1930s, I learned from Shalom Grol and Yossef Shalev, who shared with me their valuable personal knowledge. I also wish to thank Aya and Elisha Cohen, Michal Shalev, Nir Rachkovsky, and Eshkol Nevo, who read parts of the manuscript and told me how to improve it. An additional gratitude I owe to Oded Abramsky and Yael Nov, who encouraged me in the process of writing the manuscript and reminded me that it is a worthy project. I am in debt to Noam Lester, who diligently corrects linguistic errors and clarifies wrong sentences cheerfully. I also thank Chana Tyman-Levy, who made my English flow properly. Heartfelt thanks I owe to Adi Fishman, who helped in the writing process and cleared it of obvious mistakes. I am in debt to my agent, Lynne Rabinoff, who leads me in the turbulent water of publishing. I am also thankful to my publisher, Post Hill Press, for guiding the publication and marketing process. Finally, special gratitude I owe to my wife, Dvora, for encouragement and support during the process of writing this book. I also thank my children, Ayelet, Ronen, and Barak, that my occupation in writing surrounds them in most of their lives.

Table of Contents

Preface: Drinkers’ Paradise

Chapter One: All Who Are Thirsty, Come to the Waters

1. Ancient History

2. Water in Modern Times

3. Water and Disease

4. What’s Happening Today?

5. And What about the Future?

Chapter Two: Wine That Gladdens Human Hearts

1. Ancient History

2. What Happened in Ancient Greece?

3. A Little More about the Symposium

4. Conceptual Exercise: Wine in Rome

5. Wine and Medicine

6. Wine After the Decline of Rome

7. Wine and the Scientific Revolution

8. Wine and Politics in the United States

9. Kosher Wine

10. Nice to Know

11. What Goes with What? A Leisurely Ceremony

12. Wine in the Islamic World and Local Varieties

13. The Wine Production Process

14. Wine and Holy Ritual

Chapter Three: Beer Is Everywhere

1. The Agricultural Revolution

2. What Did They Drink in Mesopotamia and Egypt?

3. What Do You Drink with a Straw?

4. Beer in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Era

5. Innovations in Beer Production in Modern Times

6. Beer Production Today

7. Cider

Chapter Four: Alcohol—the Beverage of Life

1. Muslim Science in Southern Spain

2. Alcoholic Drinks: Grease for the Wheels of the Slave Trade

3. Sugar and Rum in the Caribbean Sea

4. Cocktails

5. The Dangers of Excessive Drinking

Chapter Five: The Main Types of Alcoholic Beverages

1. Whiskey: Water of Life

2. Cognac: Revealer of Secrets

3. Gin: The Persistence of Memory

4. Vodka (and Jewish Settlement in Eastern Europe)

5. Other Drinks

6. Liqueurs and Aperitifs

Chapter Six: Tea (and Rice) in China and India

1. History

2. Tea Comes to Europe

3. Luxury Tax Then and Now

4. The Political Power of Tea Traders in the Far East

5. The Rise of India

6. Tea as a Consumer Good

7. Flavored Tea

Chapter Seven: Coffee, Wakefulness and Enlightenment

1. Well Done, Goats

2. Coffee and Islam

3. Coffee Reaches Europe: The Tourist Version

4. Who Patronizes Coffee Shops?

5. Coffee in Prussia

6. Coffee and the Jews

7. How Did Coffee Leave Yemen?

8. Types of Coffee

9. How to Prepare Coffee

Chapter Eight: Soft Drinks

1. Sources

2. Soda Water

3. The Birth of a New Beverage

4. The Taste of Life: Coca-Cola Everywhere

5. Is Caffeine a Good Thing?

6. Globalization in a Bottle

7. Coca-Cola in the Middle East

8. Advantages of a Conglomeration

9. What Else Happened in the Twentieth Century?

Chapter Nine: Milk (and Honey)

1. General Knowledge

2. Ancient History

3. Milk in the Mediterranean Basin

4. Milk in Europe in the Modern Era

5. Nathan Strauss

6. Government Support for the Dairy Industry

7. Special Milk-Based Beverages

8. Technical Definitions for Milk Products

Chapter Ten: Cocoa—The Drink of Nobility

1. From Plantation to Cup

2. Cocoa and Its Substitutes

3. Changes in the Nineteenth Century

4. Cocoa Trends

5. A Little about Research

Chapter Eleven: Something Cold to Drink?

1. The United States in the Last Century

2. The Near East in Ancient Times

3. Chilling Drinks in Europe

4. Natural and Artificial Ice in the Nineteenth Century

Bibliography

About the Author

End Notes

Preface

Drinkers’ Paradise

There is no life without drinking something. Maybe this is why every social or business meeting starts with the question Would you like something to drink? Today, in the twenty-first century, we have a wide selection of beverages to choose from. Indeed, in a nearby supermarket I found no fewer than thirty-seven types of soft drinks in a variety of flavors, fourteen brands of beer, and thirty-one different wines, as well as seventeen brands of tea and thirteen of coffee. In other words, the variety of beverages offered to the public is quite impressive. However, this was not always the case. In the distant past, people drank only water. But over the last centuries, an increasing choice of beverages has become accessible to all social classes. This book tells the history of the beverages commonly consumed in a world that may be described as a drinkers’ paradise.

For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in beverages. During my early adulthood, I became engrossed in the history of drinks and drinking habits. While in my twenties, I sought to enhance my experience and tasted almost every known beverage. Later on, I began gathering historical data as well as anecdotes about drinking and beverages. My fascination with the history of food and drink dates from the early 1960s, when I took classes in economic sciences under Professor Nachum Gross. Back then, historians turned their attention to researching everyday life in past centuries. Among the leaders of this trend was the French historian Fernand Braudel, from whom I learned a great deal in terms of interpreting documented history. But the turning point for me occurred when I visited major museums in Europe, where I had the opportunity to contemplate depictions of tables ready and set for meals. To me those paintings represented the very physical aspect of history, and already then, I wondered, What beverages were served in those glasses and goblets in the reproduced scenes?

I gained additional knowledge from exhibitions and palaces in France, Italy, Denmark, and other countries, where I could admire dinner tables set for princes and counts. Dining arrangements of the rich and famous are also exhibited in historical mansions in Newport, Rhode Island. Whenever I visited one such exhibition, I could not help wondering, What was the content of those glasses and plates displayed on the table? and I searched for any available documentation. From the rich and famous, I soon moved on to the less privileged social classes, and I investigated the consumption of food and drinks throughout society. This led to my further inquiry into the production of beverages, the interaction between manufacturers and politicians, and the technology of the relevant era.

The motivation for writing this book was my interest in the history of drinking and of the manufacture of beverages, and hence I embarked on this project from a historical point of view. The realm of food and drink is wide-ranging, and so I chose to focus solely on drinking. When I searched through the literature on beverages, I did not find a single book that provided a synthetic approach to the production and consumption of beverages as part of a wider scope of human activity. The majority of history books addresses the consumption of food and drinks merely as an anecdotal activity.

This book is about quenching thirst. The information contained in it, which I gathered from numerous books and scholarly articles, aims at describing the development of beverages and of drinking habits and their connection with other facets of life. This information is, in my humble view, of universal interest, even though it may digress from the reader’s daily occupations.

This here is a rather uncommon history book, as books on history generally tend to disregard the topic of food and drink. It also differs from cookbooks, in that the latter mainly emphasize the technical aspects of creating food. While discussing the various beverages, this book strives to uncover the—sometimes hidden—ways in which they relate to social behavior, business activity, and politics.

Regarding bibliography, it should be noted that whereas we do have information on foods and beverages during the antiquity, little knowledge has reached us as far as the Middle Ages are concerned. The written history of beverages starts in the fourteenth century, thanks to a large amount of texts preserved from then onwards. There are hardly any earlier written records on this topic, and the only sources of information are medical texts and archaeological findings. Based on the sparse knowledge about the Middle Ages, we learn that the poor drank mainly water. Middle-class families could afford beer and wine, as well as better food, which they cooked themselves. Public eating facilities existed only in the form of roadhouses. We furthermore have some records, earlier than the twelfth century, of official feasts and celebrations, such as wedding meals or diplomatic occasions, but with hardly any details on the actual meal. Literary sources, as well, are highly reticent on the types of food served during the Middle Ages and merely mention the fact that celebrations were held.

Eating and drinking are simple acts performed on a daily basis, but when considering them from a historical point of view, they become complex and many-sided. We are not interested in the individual who drinks a beverage, but rather in the manner in which the individual’s consumption of beverages associates with other behaviors, both at the individual and collective level. Thus, it is useful to examine the various beverages while outlining the limits of their impact. The approach illustrated in this book is to combine the detailed description of basic beverages (such as tea or coffee) with a discussion on their connection with social and public behaviors. Each of this book’s chapters deals with one type of beverage and investigates how it influenced—and was influenced by—historical, sociological, political, and technological developments. Each discussion encompasses aspects of production as well as consumption of the relevant beverage throughout history.

Chapter One

All Who Are Thirsty, Come to the Waters

1. Ancient History

Just as with any economic product, water depends on capital investment to produce and transport it. So it comes at a price. In order to cover the cost of pumping and pipes, it has to be a significant price. There are opponents to this cost who say that drinking water is a basic right and that citizens should receive it almost free of charge. But if there is no one to pay for it, there will be no pipes or plumbing, and no water in our homes.

Indeed, it has always been a challenge to provide drinking water to the public, since fresh water has been a condition for the existence of any civilization since the beginning of time. Drinking water is both a physical resource and a necessity for physical existence. Failure to drink water in an arid zone means risking death. The problem is that it is a heavy resource that is difficult to package and deliver, and it is also difficult to keep the water clean and free of pollutants.

Because of the importance of drinking, ancient civilizations were already involved in irrigation and the diversion and transport of water, and water reservoirs have been found in archaeological excavations in many places in Asia and America. The Bible is full of references¹ to springs, wells, and streams, as well as to less popular sources, as it is said in Nehemiah 9:15: And You brought them water out of the rock for their thirst. Water is mentioned in the Bible as a public resource and that it belonged to everyone in its natural state. However, when there were transport and storage costs, people did not have open access, and a priority scale had to be established—that is, a ranking of uses. The first priority was usually given for drinking, and only afterwards for irrigation. In the drinking category, preference was generally given to the local dwellers, and only then was the right of use given to others.

This is also the Muslim approach. The Quran explicitly states that whoever gives water to every creature will be rewarded. Water is a gift from God, and everyone has the right to access it. The Muslim rule was adopted by the Ottoman Empire, which imposed the obligation to provide drinking water to its citizens and residents. Yet sometimes God Himself limits the amount of water available. When this occurred, believers also limited the amount of water each family could draw (free of charge) from a public well. It was usually twenty liters per family.

Still, the question arises: who is to make sure that water is available and how to finance it? Here we can learn from ancient Rome. The Romans established aqueducts for water transport (even in the middle of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx wrote of his admiration of them). The system of water supply and distribution in ancient Rome was very impressive. Over some five hundred years, eleven aqueducts were built in Rome, and the water was transported and distributed by force of gravity. The water was used not only for drinking, but also for bathing in the famous bathhouses. Within the city there were small neighborhood reservoirs (distribution centers) called lacus, from which most of the residents took water in buckets for domestic use free of charge. During the reign of Emperor Augustus, these distribution centers numbered around six hundred. But there was also private demand for water for the city’s wealthy. Some of the water carried by the aqueducts arrived at the distribution points, while another part (approximately 40 percent) was transported by pipes directly to the homes of the affluent residents who paid a water tax. In other words, there was a cross-subsidy—part of the population paid, and some had a natural right to take water free of charge.

Construction of the aqueduct water transport system involved immense expense, and even after the construction itself, ongoing maintenance required additional resources. Therefore, the consumption of water was subject to payment, paid by the wealthy of Rome. Chroniclers have rightly argued that the great public works for water transport and the improvement of roads for traffic were also done to enhance the ruler’s reputation and fame, and to remind the citizens who was concerned for their welfare. To this end, great decorated water fountains were built (especially in the time of Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius). In practice, it was necessary to pay for this crucial commodity, and the payment was borne by the city’s wealthy.

2. Water in Modern Times

Was the Roman custom accepted in later generations? Let’s examine the history of drinking water in London and New York. The first residents of New York City (originally called New Amsterdam) were Dutch. They drew water from wells that were privately owned. After the British conquered the city in 1664, additional wells were drilled in the new neighborhoods, and the residents of the surrounding areas were asked to pay for the construction of the wells. They were also