Exercises

Wine in American Life

by Matt Miller

The availability of cheap, plentiful whiskey was one key to the extensive use of spirituous liquor by so many Americans in the early nineteenth century; another key was the American diet. There were a number of ways in which the habits of eating and drinking at that time encouraged Americans to drink whiskey. But that preference was also related to larger social questions. Dietary habits, as Claude Levi-Strauss has pointed out, are good indicators of a culture's popular attitudes and social structure. Thus, an examination of the role of whiskey in the American diet in the early nineteenth century will both inform us about the use of whiskey in everyday life and broaden our understanding of the inner workings of American society in those years.

To understand the great popularity of whiskey we have to consider, among other things, the shortcomings of other available beverages. To begin with, neither Americans nor Europeans of the period tended to indulge in refreshing glasses of water. This was not so much the consequence of an aversion to that healthful beverage as that the available water was seldom clear, sparkling, or appetizing. The citizens of St. Louis, for example, had to let water from the Mississippi River stand before they could drink it, and the sediment often filled one-quarter of the container. Further downstream, at Natchez, the river water was too muddy to be drunk even after it had settled. Instead, people drank rainwater, which they collected in roof cisterns. During frequent droughts, however, the cisterns were empty. Rural areas often lacked good water because deep wells were expensive and difficult to build, while the water from shallow wells was usually cloudy. The purest water came from clear, free-flowing springs, but these were not always conveniently located. Although Kentucky and Tennessee had abundant low-lying springs, pioneers who feared swamp fevers or Indian attacks preferred to build their cabins on high ground. As a result, water had to be carried uphill in a bucket, as at Lincoln's birthplace at Hodgenville, Kentucky. Toting water lessened the frontiersman's enthusiasm for drinking it. So did the cold of winter, for then, recalled one pioneer, water had to be thawed.

Water supplies were no better in the nation's largest and wealthiest cities. Washingtonians, for example, long had to depend upon water from private wells because of a deep-seated opposition to higher taxes to pay the cost of digging public wells. During the 1820s the capital city's only piped water was from a privately owned spring that supplied two blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue. Cincinnati was no better off. There, according to a concerned Dr. Daniel Drake, most people drank "often impure" water drawn in barrels from the frequently low and muddy Ohio. To escape beclouded river water, wealthy citizens dug their own wells, which provided an ill-tasting drink "slightly impregnated with iron, and salts." New York City was worse, for Manhattan's shallow, brackish wells made it certain that the drinker of water would not only quench his thirst but also be given "physic." It was this latter effect, perhaps, that caused New Yorkers to avoid drinking water and earned them a reputation for preferring other sorts of beverages. One resident who was asked whether the city's water was potable replied, "Really, I cannot pretend to say, as I never tasted water there that was not mixed with some kind of liquor." Conditions were so bad that New Yorkers adopted a plan to dam the Croton River and transport its water forty miles to the city. As soon as the aqueduct opened in 1842, residents began to switch from spirits to water. Two years later, on the 4th of July, teetotaling Mayor James Harper shrewdly countered traditional holiday dram-drinking by setting up in the city hall park a large basin of iced Croton water. It was only after the improvement of public water supplies that temperance zealots embraced the idea of ‘Cold Water' as a substitute for alcohol.

During the first third of the century water was often condemned on the ground that it lacked food value and did not aid digestion. Indeed, many people believed water unfit for human consumption. As one American said, "It's very good for navigation." Others thought water to be lowly and common; it was the drink of pigs, cows, and horses. Or, as Benjamin Franklin put it, if God had intended man to drink water, he would not have made him with an elbow capable of raising a wine glass. There were also those who thought that water could be lethal, especially if drunk in hot weather. English immigrant Joseph Pickering, for example, so feared the effect of drinking water on scorching days that he resolved the drink only a concoction of water and rye whiskey, a beverage he believed to be less dangerous. Nor was Pickering alone in refusing to drink this insidious liquid. From Virginia, Elijah Fletcher assured his father in Vermont, "I shall not injure my health in drinking water. I have not drank a tumbler full since here. We always have a boll of toddy made for dinner... " In the same spirit, John Randolph warned his son, "I see by the papers, eight deaths in one week from cold water, in Philadelphia alone." Randolph himself was unlikely to fall victim to water drinking, for he used none in mixing his favorite mint juleps.

While water was eschewed, many Americans drank milk—when they could get it. Sometimes milk was excellent, cheap, and plentiful; at other times, especially on the frontier, it was not available or its price was as high as 12C a quart, more than whiskey. Costs were erratic and supplies spotty because each locality depended upon its own production. Bulk and lack of refrigeration made both transportation and storage difficult. During the winter poor fodder insured that the supply of milk was small, and in all seasons the needs of children often forced adults to forego this drink. Even when milk was plentiful, many did not drink it for fear of the fatal "milk sickness". This illness, which killed Abraham Lincoln's mother, was caused by a poison transmitted through milk from cows that had grazed on the wild jimson weed. Those who believed that it was better not to risk getting the milk sickness turned to safer beverages, such as whiskey.

Americans also rejected tea, which was relatively expensive. During the 1820s, a cup of tea cost more than a mixed drink made with whiskey. As much as half the price of tea represented import duties, which had been set high because tea was imported from the British colony of India, carried in British ships, and drunk by the rich. Although tea's unpopularity was usually attributed to its high price, its popularity remained low even after temperance advocates succeeded in getting the impost halved. In 1832 annual consumption continued to average less than a pound—250 cups—per person. Even when its price was low, most Americans considered tea to be an alien "foreign luxury". To drink it was unpatriotic. While popular in anglophilic New England, imported teas were so disliked in the rest of the country that New Yorkers substituted glasses of wine at society "tea parties", and westerners, who disdained imports, brewed their own sassafras, spicewood, mint, and wild root teas. Frontiersmen believed teas to be insipid "slops" fit only for the sick and those who, like British Lords, were incapable of bodily labor. So rare was tea on the frontier that its proper method of preparation was not always known. Thus, when one English traveler presented an innkeeper's wife with a pound of tea and asked her to brew a cup, she obliged by boiling the entire amount and serving the leaves in their liquid as a kind of soup.

Although tea was expensive, it cost less per cup than coffee, and before 1825 tea outsold coffee. At 25C a pound, the annual per capita consumption of coffee was less than two pounds or 100 cups. Imported coffee was then such a luxury that many Americans drank unappetizing homemade substitutes concocted from rye grain, peas, brown bread, or burned toast. Although coffee was imported, it did not share the scorn heaped upon tea. Perhaps coffee was more acceptable because it was imported from Latin America. Nor had there ever been a Boston Coffee Party. During the late 1820s, therefore, when the price of coffee fell to 15C a pound, imports rose, and consumption increased correspondingly. This development delighted those temperance reformers who wanted coffee to replace distilled spirits, and in 1830 they succeeded in persuading Congress to remove the duty on coffee. The price soon dropped to 10C a pound, a rate that brought the price of a cup of coffee down to the price of a glass of whiskey punch and pushed coffee sales ahead of tea to five pounds per person. By 1833 coffee had ceased to be a luxury and, according to the Baltimore American, entered "largely into the daily consumption of almost every family, rich and poor," prominent "among the necessaries of life." But in the first third of the century it had been too expensive to compete with whiskey.

Having found coffee, tea, milk, and water unacceptable for one reason or another, some Americans turned to fermented drinks, such as wine. Although its high price of $1 a gallon, often four times that of whiskey, limited annual per capita consumption of wine to less than a fifth of a gallon, its preference by the wealthy and their attempts to promote its use gave it a social importance out of proportion to its small sales. Many upper class opponents of distilled spirits favored wine because they believed it to be free of alcohol, the chemical that a number of physicians and scientists regarded as a poison. While the presence of alcohol in distilled beverages had long been recognized, early nineteenth-century wine drinkers noted with satisfaction that no experimenter had found that compound in a fermented beverage. It was an unpleasant surprise when chemist William Brande succeeded in measuring the amount of alcohol in fermented drinks and not only proved that wine contained a higher percentage of alcohol than hard cider or beer, but also showed that the favorite American wine, Madeira, was more than 20 percent alcohol. After 1820, as temperance organizations disseminated Brande's findings, the number of wine advocates declined, although a few, such as Dr. S. H. Dickson of South Carolina, insisted that the alcohol in wine was rendered harmless by its incorporation into the wine.

Early wine connoisseurs included such men as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and John Marshall. At the executive mansion during Jefferson's presidency, diners enjoyed round after round of fine, light French wines, and at Monticello the Sage himself customarily drank three glasses of wine each day, a task facilitated by a dumbwaiter that carried wine bottles from the cellar to Jefferson's dining room. Another wine fancier was Jefferson's political rival Aaron Burr, who maintained New York's most impressive cellar. It was at a Burr dinner that Andrew Jackson was introduced to the subtleties and pleasures of the grape. He subsequently stocked the Hermitage in Tennessee with a selection that led to its reputation as the wine center of the West. Vinous drink, however, had no greater devotee than Chief Justice John Marshall. At the boarding house in Washington where the Supreme Court justices lived, the boarders permitted wine only in wet weather, for the sake of their health. Upon occasion, the chief justice would command Justice Story to check the window to see if it were raining. When informed that the sun shone brightly, Marshall would observe, "All the better; for our jurisdiction extends over so large a territory that the doctrine of chances makes it certain that it must be raining somewhere." The chief justice, observed Story, had been "brought up upon Federalism and Madeira, and he [was] not the man to outgrow his early prejudices."

During the first quarter of the century, among society's upper classes, wine was central to the male dinner party. Wine provided both a chief topic of discussion and an excuse for late hours, which were spent sampling new and exotic varieties. A well-to-do Maine landowner, Robert Gardiner, has left a picture of one such party held in New York in 1803. "After the cloth was removed and the bottle had passed once around," he wrote, "Mr. Hammond asked what was the duty of the guests when the host opened for them a bottle of very choice wine." A voice replied, "To see the bottom of it." The servants then presented the party with a gallon bottle. "This, gentlemen," said the host, "is very fine old wine, the best I have, and as I open it for you, I expect you will finish it." Gardiner was forced, as a matter of propriety, to drink until he left the party with his head reeling. While the custom of holding these lengthy gentlemen's dinners gradually faded, it did not disappear before mid-century. As late as 1836 New York socialite Philip Hone, who often hosted such dinners, noted with satisfaction that his well-stocked cellar contained 672 gallons of Madeira and sherry.

Although wealthy wine drinkers continued to indulge their palates, the Revolution's patriotic and democratic ideals had put these Americans on the defensive. Nearly all the wine Americans drank was imported, largely from Madeira, and to continue to purchase dutied, foreign beverages both worsened the American balance of payments and cast doubts upon the patriotism of the purchasers. Then, too, continuing to drink a refreshment priced beyond the means of the average citizen was considered elitist and undemocratic. On the other hand, few devotees of wine were willing to forego their beverage. To resolve these conflicts, wine drinkers promoted the planting of American vineyards in the hope that the United States could produce a cheap, native wine. Men such as Thomas Jefferson, John Calhoun, and Henry Clay experimented with grapes on their own land, encouraged others to do so, and invited European vintners to immigrate to America to establish vineyards. During the 1820s vintner's guides proliferated, and numerous periodicals printed recipes for making wine. Journalist Hezekiah Niles, one of the leaders of this movement, prophesied that in time the United States would produce all its own wine.

(2 391 words)

 Text