I ended the previous segment of this series by commenting that alcohol has had a tremendous impact on human development throughout history. This article, part 2 of a 3-part set, looks at the economic side of that influence.
Alcohol has been used to pay workers and buy slaves; it's started wars and been used to celebrate the end of wars; it's created and destroyed empires (the Roman Empire, for instance, went downhill partially because the lead in their winecups was dissolving into their drinks--and those folks really liked to drink). To this day, alcohol stands as an enduring, driving force behind countless enterprises (for example, ethanol is really just moonshine denatured with some gasoline) and an ever-evolving influence on nearly every aspect of the worldwide economic landscape.
Let's go back to the beginning. Long before beer was put into those ubiquitous brown and green glass bottles, beer was used to pay workers in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Both those places were, according to Tom Standage ("A History of the World in 6 Glasses"), "founded on a surplus of cereal grains produced by organized agriculture on a massive scale." In other words, they had more barley and wheat than they needed for bread, so they started turning it into beer. The early beers, as I noted in Part One, were more for nutrition than intoxication; they were probably more like a fermented gruel than a tasty drink.
But when beer and wine finally moved beyond gruel and fruit juice into drinks with a kick, everything changed. Hugh Johnson, in "The Story of Wine," comments that "the Greeks were able to trade wine for precious meals, the Romans for slaves, with a success that has a sinister echo in the activities of modern drug pushers--except that there is nothing remotely sinister about wine." Egyptian tombs were built for important officials and craftsmen involved in wine making; in ancient Rome, amphoras of wine were practically mass-produced; Johnson notes that "even today in trading centres such as Delos . . . entire beaches consist of nothing but a mixture of white marble from ruined monuments and the red, sea-smoothed shards of broken wine containers."
To give that last quote a certain perspective, the Romans also considered a slave to be worth one amphora of wine. Draw what conclusions you like.
For fiction writers: which cultures, in your world, honored alcohol highly in the beginning of their various histories? What did they use as a source material--i.e., did they use wheat, barley, rye, millet, grapes, apples, agave, or something else? Fermented drinks are nearly inevitable in any civilized world, but there have been a fair amount of alternative intoxicants floating around through the years; which segments of your world turned away from fermentation to more heavily explore mushrooms, marijuana, and opium? This is as essential a piece of information when building your world as knowing whether horses and camels developed as opposed to giant lizards and dragons.
Returning to our own history, wine arguably had a greater economic impact than beer; for example, Pompeii was the main source of wine for Rome, so when Vesuvius blew in AD 79, the industry in that area took a major hit. Rome recovered by planting vines everywhere they could, frantically replacing corn with grapes to ensure they could keep their vino flowing. Eventually Emperor Domitian had to step in and stop the overenthusiastic planting; not only were they running low on corn, they were overloaded with wine. Domitian "banned the planting of any new vineyards in Italy, and ordered the grubbing up of half the vines in Rome's overseas provinces. In a separate edict he also banned the planting of small vineyards. . . ." (Johnson, "The Story of Wine")Alcohol has been used to pay workers and buy slaves; it's started wars and been used to celebrate the end of wars; it's created and destroyed empires (the Roman Empire, for instance, went downhill partially because the lead in their winecups was dissolving into their drinks--and those folks really liked to drink). To this day, alcohol stands as an enduring, driving force behind countless enterprises (for example, ethanol is really just moonshine denatured with some gasoline) and an ever-evolving influence on nearly every aspect of the worldwide economic landscape.
Let's go back to the beginning. Long before beer was put into those ubiquitous brown and green glass bottles, beer was used to pay workers in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Both those places were, according to Tom Standage ("A History of the World in 6 Glasses"), "founded on a surplus of cereal grains produced by organized agriculture on a massive scale." In other words, they had more barley and wheat than they needed for bread, so they started turning it into beer. The early beers, as I noted in Part One, were more for nutrition than intoxication; they were probably more like a fermented gruel than a tasty drink.
But when beer and wine finally moved beyond gruel and fruit juice into drinks with a kick, everything changed. Hugh Johnson, in "The Story of Wine," comments that "the Greeks were able to trade wine for precious meals, the Romans for slaves, with a success that has a sinister echo in the activities of modern drug pushers--except that there is nothing remotely sinister about wine." Egyptian tombs were built for important officials and craftsmen involved in wine making; in ancient Rome, amphoras of wine were practically mass-produced; Johnson notes that "even today in trading centres such as Delos . . . entire beaches consist of nothing but a mixture of white marble from ruined monuments and the red, sea-smoothed shards of broken wine containers."
To give that last quote a certain perspective, the Romans also considered a slave to be worth one amphora of wine. Draw what conclusions you like.
For fiction writers: which cultures, in your world, honored alcohol highly in the beginning of their various histories? What did they use as a source material--i.e., did they use wheat, barley, rye, millet, grapes, apples, agave, or something else? Fermented drinks are nearly inevitable in any civilized world, but there have been a fair amount of alternative intoxicants floating around through the years; which segments of your world turned away from fermentation to more heavily explore mushrooms, marijuana, and opium? This is as essential a piece of information when building your world as knowing whether horses and camels developed as opposed to giant lizards and dragons.
An even larger shock to the wine industry was the advent of Phylloxera; and unfortunately, the blame for that has to be laid more or less at America's door. When America was settled, colonists naturally brought along their taste for wine; finding that the native grapes, while hardy, made lousy wine, they tried importing European vines. Unfortunately the imports died, even in conditions that should have been perfect for the most finicky vine; naturally, the colonists sent samples of their vines back over to Europe for the successful vintners to study what was going wrong.
Big mistake. Turned out the problem was a tiny bug that loved eating grapevine roots--and by sending the samples over to Europe, America also sent the bugs. European vines had no defense against the bug, and Europe's wine industry hit the skids as vineyards died en masse; they only recovered by grafting European vines onto the tougher American grapevine roots. Today, only a handful of ungrafted wines are available from places such as Chile, where the Phylloxera never reached; if you enjoy wine, it's worth tracking a couple versions down and doing a taste test to see if you detect a difference. If nothing else, you'll be paying homage to a significant period in the history of wine.
Continued . . . .
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)
Growing Money: The Alcohol Economy
