Booze

One of the great challenges of survival is hydration.  One of the great pleasures of living involves dehydration (talking about alcohol folks, keep it clean).  Discovering the local beverage of choice is one of the things I look forward to when I travel.  Each country seems to have its own specialty and variation depending on the available ingredients.  Today I want to cover a few types of potables, their recipes and a limited look at their histories.
    Water is one of those basic things we all like to take for granted (I covered some of this in a previous post (Resource Allocation (part I)).  When someone is thirsty, they just plop down by the side of a stream and have a drink, right?  Not so simple my friends.  As our forebears knew, there are loads and loads of water-borne illnesses (as well as parasites and such) found in surface water (lakes, streams).  Wells can become tainted, especially by human waste (and also if your enemies poison them).  Water may have been the cheapest option, but it was also potentially dangerous and not very much fun. 
    Grapes are thought to have been domesticated 6,000 to 8,000 years ago in Turkey.  A wine jar found in Iran dates from 5400 BC.  The oldest known winery (with wine press, fermentation vats, etc) was discovered in Armenia and dates from 4100 BC.  All of the major wine producing regions of Europe were developed under the Roman Empire and laws had to be passed to limit production so there would be enough food grown.  Wine was (and is) employed in a variety of religious rituals, from Dionysus and Bacchus to the Eucharist (from Christianity).  Wine was often diluted with water (in a ratios as high as 4 or 5 parts water to 1 of wine in medieval Europe).  Wine was uncommon in the North and East of Europe during the medieval period (except for use in religious ritual), and drunk primarily by the nobility in those regions.   
    Mead (sometimes known as honey wine) is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting a mixture of honey and water.  This basic recipe can be broadened to include fruits, spices, grains or hops which produces a wide variety of flavors.  It is found historically in Europe, Asia and Africa, with the oldest surviving description found in the Rigveda (connected today to Hinduism and dated 1700-1100BC).  Mead was especially popular in the areas of Europe where grapes could not be grown.  I always think of Beowulf drinking his fill in the great mead hall of Hrothgar.  In Ethiopia, each family had its own recipe for making the stuff.  Preparation of mead may be as simple as exposing your mixture to the sun for 40 days and then storing it on a shelf near the fire.  
    Beer (a fermented grain beverage) has also been consumed since prehistoric times throughout the world.  The ancient Egyptians taught the Greeks and the consumption of beer is noted in the Epic of Gilgamesh.  These early beers were often thick, more like a gruel than a drink.  Beer was popular amongst the lower classes throughout medieval Europe and was consumed by all classes in the North and East.  Many different methods and recipes for the making of beer have evolved over time. Beer produced in Asia is fermented from rice, though rice is used to create a variety of other alcoholic products as well.  Ale (defined at the time as unhopped beer) was the drink of choice in medieval England and had to be consumed soon after production.  The version consumed by the common folk often had a much lower alcohol content and was called Small Beer (or Small Ale), which was less expensive to produce.  Hopped beer is first mentioned in the 9th Century, but was perfected in Bohemia in the 13th, which improved both the brewing process and the quality of the product as far as preservation is concerned.  In medieval Europe (like for those guys building the pyramids), beer is thought to have served as a significant portion of a worker's caloric intake.
    Distilled alcoholic beverages have a long and varied tradition which produces both Liquors and Liqueurs (Liqueurs have added sugar and/or flavorings, post distillation).  Distilling takes your fermented fruits, grains or vegetables and removes most of that pesky water, yielding a much higher alcohol content (and greatly improving portability).  Many brandies are named for the fruits (or nuts) from which they are produced (in Czech: slivovitze, hrushkovitze, malinkoitze, etc).  Herbal mixtures (think Jagermeister or Becherovka)  are also popular and were (or are, depending on who you ask) thought to be medicinal.  Distillates of alcohol are believed to have originated around the 12th Century.  Distillates do seem to be regionally preferred, with vodka in Russia/Poland/Ukraine; brandies in Germany/Czech Republic/Hungary; whiskey in Ireland/Scotland; and so on.  I assume that this regionalization is related to local economies and agricultural production.  
    Cider is another alcoholic beverage with a long history (first noted by Julius Caesar on invading Britain).  It is made from the juice of apples (though sometimes pears or peaches) and vat fermented.  Like wine, ciders can range in flavor form dry to sweet and it can be augmented with a variety of flavors.  Cider has historically been popular in England, Ireland and France, as well of portions of Spain, Austria and Germany.  Distillates of cider (like Calvados, mmmm) are a natural (later) development.
     What sorts of booze we drank throughout history had incredible regional variation.  Throughout the world, small batches of all of these goods are still made by families in smaller communities.  There seem to be no limits to creativity when it come to getting soused, I mean, enjoying the bounty of the land.  In a time when water was often dangerous to drink and getting enough food to carry you through the day was a significant concern (not that it isn't still, in many places), alcohol delivered what we needed.  I'm sure it helped make some of the backbreaking work more palatable too (though perhaps a bit more dangerous).  
 

http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/47773
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wine
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pwp/tofi/medieval_english_ale.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer
http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=33&Itemid=20
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead
wine transport - http://vinepair.com/wine-blog/history-wine-transport-8000-years/