Drinking In Your World:
Avoiding Alcohol Abuse For Writers
Note: I began my research for this article assuming that I could distill the relevant details into an explanation of a thousand words or less; finding that impossible, I've decided to break it into a series of three articles. This one focuses mainly on a historical overview, with notes on how fantasy fiction writers might use the information to develop their fictional worlds more thoroughly. Following articles will go into more detail on specific issues. --Leona
In America, we take for granted that a nearby store will offer glossy, gleaming shelves holding glass and metal containers of ruby, emerald, and sapphire; they come slim and sleek or chunky and oddly shaped, with colorful or demure labels, all glistening under fluorescent lights, many conveniently refrigerated. I am, of course, referring to alcoholic beverages. And it's very easy to take a great deal for granted when writing a scene involving alcohol, but as with any other subject, generic assumptions are generally wrong.
For example, a sailor swaggering into a generic tavern and ordering a glass of rum seems perfectly reasonable. However, in our real world, rum was only developed fairly recently (seventeenth century); it did not exist during the Middle Ages or in medieval times. Even more important, rum is based on sugar cane syrup. If there aren't any sugar cane plantations in your fictional world, there isn't any rum. And if there are sugar cane plantations in a low-technology world, there probably ought to be slaves to run them; otherwise the price of rum will be so high as to make exporting it impractical, and it would only be a local drink, not one bought hundreds of miles away on another continent by a rough sailor.
And speaking of sailors, assuming that your world is advanced enough to have rum and unethical enough to have slaves, almost anything liquid imported from overseas was expensive enough to make further transport overland even more impractical (it's a matter of load weight and limited space), so a generic tavern set in the middle of a continent, far from any ocean, wouldn't stock rum--or, probably, most imported drinks--either.
What would a generic Middle Ages tavern stock, then? Probably ale (not lager!) and wine, but they won't much resemble what modern shoppers can buy at the local Seven-Eleven at one in the morning. Beer began its journey thousands of years ago to arrive at today's sleek, dark bottles by way of a bowl of fermented gruel. It must have taken great courage to drink the frothy mess, and probably a few serious hunger pangs as well. It probably wasn't the first intoxicant discovered; on hot days, water with honey ferments readily into mead, and fruit juice into wine. But beer, as humanity slowly settled down and began cultivating crops, was easier to both reproduce and to store than any other option; when harvesting grain, some could be held aside and stored until needed.
From gruel it developed into gritty: early beer drinkers literally used long straws to avoid the chaff and debris floating atop the beer. At last someone came up with the bright idea of straining the beer, vastly improving its popularity; early Egyptian records list multiple different beers with names such as "the joy-bringer" and "the beautiful and good".
Beer didn't just make people feel good; it was one of the causal factors in the shift from nomadic to agricultural life. Grain takes time to grow, and beer takes time to ferment; once the grain is cut and stored, and the beer is bubbling in the vat, wandering off to a new location and leaving it all behind isn't particularly smart--so if the culture of a story is primarily nomadic, they won't have ale or wine unless they buy it from more settled cultures. Nomads may have fermented milk stored in sacks made from a sheep, goat, or cow stomach, but any drink they create is something they can pick up and carry with them when they move to a new location.
Beer and wine also served for a long time as a currency. Keeping track of how much beer and bread workers received in return for their labor led to the development of writing; yet another feather in alcohol's metaphorical cap.
Avoiding Alcohol Abuse For Writers
Note: I began my research for this article assuming that I could distill the relevant details into an explanation of a thousand words or less; finding that impossible, I've decided to break it into a series of three articles. This one focuses mainly on a historical overview, with notes on how fantasy fiction writers might use the information to develop their fictional worlds more thoroughly. Following articles will go into more detail on specific issues. --Leona
In America, we take for granted that a nearby store will offer glossy, gleaming shelves holding glass and metal containers of ruby, emerald, and sapphire; they come slim and sleek or chunky and oddly shaped, with colorful or demure labels, all glistening under fluorescent lights, many conveniently refrigerated. I am, of course, referring to alcoholic beverages. And it's very easy to take a great deal for granted when writing a scene involving alcohol, but as with any other subject, generic assumptions are generally wrong.
For example, a sailor swaggering into a generic tavern and ordering a glass of rum seems perfectly reasonable. However, in our real world, rum was only developed fairly recently (seventeenth century); it did not exist during the Middle Ages or in medieval times. Even more important, rum is based on sugar cane syrup. If there aren't any sugar cane plantations in your fictional world, there isn't any rum. And if there are sugar cane plantations in a low-technology world, there probably ought to be slaves to run them; otherwise the price of rum will be so high as to make exporting it impractical, and it would only be a local drink, not one bought hundreds of miles away on another continent by a rough sailor.
And speaking of sailors, assuming that your world is advanced enough to have rum and unethical enough to have slaves, almost anything liquid imported from overseas was expensive enough to make further transport overland even more impractical (it's a matter of load weight and limited space), so a generic tavern set in the middle of a continent, far from any ocean, wouldn't stock rum--or, probably, most imported drinks--either.
What would a generic Middle Ages tavern stock, then? Probably ale (not lager!) and wine, but they won't much resemble what modern shoppers can buy at the local Seven-Eleven at one in the morning. Beer began its journey thousands of years ago to arrive at today's sleek, dark bottles by way of a bowl of fermented gruel. It must have taken great courage to drink the frothy mess, and probably a few serious hunger pangs as well. It probably wasn't the first intoxicant discovered; on hot days, water with honey ferments readily into mead, and fruit juice into wine. But beer, as humanity slowly settled down and began cultivating crops, was easier to both reproduce and to store than any other option; when harvesting grain, some could be held aside and stored until needed.
From gruel it developed into gritty: early beer drinkers literally used long straws to avoid the chaff and debris floating atop the beer. At last someone came up with the bright idea of straining the beer, vastly improving its popularity; early Egyptian records list multiple different beers with names such as "the joy-bringer" and "the beautiful and good".
Beer didn't just make people feel good; it was one of the causal factors in the shift from nomadic to agricultural life. Grain takes time to grow, and beer takes time to ferment; once the grain is cut and stored, and the beer is bubbling in the vat, wandering off to a new location and leaving it all behind isn't particularly smart--so if the culture of a story is primarily nomadic, they won't have ale or wine unless they buy it from more settled cultures. Nomads may have fermented milk stored in sacks made from a sheep, goat, or cow stomach, but any drink they create is something they can pick up and carry with them when they move to a new location.
Beer and wine also served for a long time as a currency. Keeping track of how much beer and bread workers received in return for their labor led to the development of writing; yet another feather in alcohol's metaphorical cap.
copyright 2009 Leona Wisoker
Leona may be contacted by email at the following address:
leona at leonawisoker dot com (no spaces, of course)
leona at leonawisoker dot com (no spaces, of course)
Although I write about the desert in my debut novel, I grew up for the most part in the north and I really, really love snow! So look for the frozen north to come into play in future books.