liquid history

Some thoughts on

A history of the world in six glasses

by Tom Standage

Atlantic Books 2007

While I don’t read about food if I can avoid it, I make exceptions for drink, especially wine. Still not my top priority, so it took me a while to get round to Tom Standage’s excellent liquid history of the world covering beer, wine, rum, coffee, tea and coca-cola.

I was mainly hoping to compare notes on things that I have also covered and may cover again, including the origins of agriculture and the socio-ecology of wine and coffee. Still, the other chapters were fascinating too, and maybe I should find an excuse to write about rum, or even tea. I’ll draw the line at coca cola.

The six drinks capture much of world history in a surprisingly neat series, with the three alcoholic ones leading the way and the three caffeinated ones catering for our more sober times. Water, the essential liquid of life and thus not a choice as such, only gets the epilogue.

The perspective is somewhat anglocentric, so manages to jump directly from the Roman Empire and its wine to the British colonies and their rum. I’m sure there must be a causal connection via French wine and cognac, but those “foreign” drinks only get a very fleeting mention as competition that the rum distillers had to overcome. So maybe not quite a complete history of the world, but an interesting read nonetheless.

Looking up the cover, I found out that the author has followed this up with an "edible history" - I'm sure it's fascinating, but I guess I'll stick with the liquids.