A History of the World in 6 Glasses

by Tom Standage

Beer is a liquid relic from human prehistory, and its origins are closely intertwined with the origins of civilization itself.

Greek customs such as wine drinking were regarded as worthy of imitation by other cultures. So the ships that carried Greek wine were carrying Greek civilization, distributing it around the Mediterranean and beyond, one amphora at a time. Wine displaced beer to become the most civilized and sophisticated of

drinks—a status it has maintained ever since, thanks to its association with the intellectual achievements of Ancient Greece.

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.

the colonists' dependence on imports from Europe. Rum was generally

and cheers the Spirits, without making Mad. Western Europe began to emerge from an alcoholic haze that had lasted for

centuries. "This coffee drink," wrote one English observer in 1660, "hath

Coffee was the great soberer, the drink of clear-headedness, the epitome of modernity and progress—the ideal beverage, in short, for the Age of Reason.