Drinking in Colonial America

When the colonists first came to America they found that European grape vines failed to take on American soil and the Eastern seaboard was ill-suited for growing the grain needed to brew beer or distill alcohol. As a result, most wine and brandy, as well as most beer and porter were imported. Ships would set sail from Boston laden with cod and return with barrels of wine. Madeira, sherry, as well as now-forgotten favorites as bastard (a sweet Spanish wine made from the bastardo grape), malaga (a sweet fortifdied wine made in Andalusia), canary (the now-extinct sherry of the Canary Islands), tent (from the Spanish tinto, or red), and alicante (a robust red from Spain's Mediterranean coast). Madeira was far and away the favorite wine of the colonies, in part because it actually improved with travel, but also because it was relatively cheap. After Madeira, canary, port, sherry, malaga, and fayal (from the island of the same name in the Azores) were most poular. French wine, especially Bordeaux, could be found on the best tables, where guests could also enjoy the best of Burgundy and Champagne, as well as southern French wines, sauterne from the fabled Chateau d'Yquem, and most unusal, Montepulciano wines from Italy.

The colonists did not depend solely on imports which were not affordable for all. In 1629, Virgina had two brewhouses, Boston its first malt house in 1637, grain (corn or rye) was being was distilled into alcohol on Staten Island in 1640. Mead and metheglin, fermented from honey, were being brewed throughout the colonies. Since ingredients for traditional beverages were not always available, the colonial farmer turned to whatever would ferment - pine chips, hemlock, roasted corn, dried apple skins, sassafras roots, bran, parsnips, currants, and elderberries. Peaches and pears were used to make ciders, know as peachy and perry. In the South, peaches were also distilled into brandy. Apple cider eclipsed beer in New England by the middle of the 17th century. (The first European settlement in America was Jamestown in 1607; the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620. In 1610, the population was 350, by 1650 it was around 50,000).

Cider and Beer

The first beverages of choice were cider and beer. Both were simple to make. For cider, the raw material, apples, was readily available. For beer, they turned to corn, wheat, oats, persimmons, and green cornstalks.

In 1612, the Dutch opened in New Amsterdam the first brewery in what would be British America. Breweries began to supply ordinaries and taverns. In larger population centers, this worked well, because beer did not keep. Cities had enough drinkers to consume the beer before it spoiled.

The first Europeans thought that the New World would be a perfect place to make wine. It was not. European grapevines did not survive American pests and diseases. Successive experiments in establishing vineyards failed in Virginia, New England, Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Colonists did use native grapes to make wines, but these never supplanted European imports.

Jefferson was a passionate wine advocate and connoisseur. He became interested in wines and viticulture during his diplomatic service in France during the 1780s, taking time to tour vineyards in Alsace, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, and the Rhone and Rhine Valleys. He collected wine, bought 20,000 bottles of European imports as president, and advised George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, and James Monroe on vintages. Jefferson called for grape cultivation in the United States. Like everyone else, though, he failed at it.

Madeira was popular. It came from the Portuguese Atlantic island of that name. This beverage not only survived the long ocean voyage but improved with the tossing in a ship's hold. It also proved resilient in the steamy South. About 1750, somebody decided to fortify Madeira with brandy. The new taste appealed to Americans, and Madeira became the preeminent wine in British North America.

Distilled Spirits

As time passed, distilled spirits became popular and widely available. They required more equipment and skill than beer and cider but made better economic sense for producers. The raw materials were available—grapes, plums, apples, blackberries, pears, and cherries. Peach brandy, a Southern specialty, was popular, as was applejack, which came from distilling cider. Distilled spirits kept longer than cider or beer, and because of their concentration of alcohol, were more potent. From the standpoint of intoxicant per ounce, they took less space than beer or cider and could be more easily transported. Those factors helped contribute to the success of rum in America.

The Laird & Company Distillery in New Jersey was the first American applejack distillery to open in 1780.

Rum

Rum was king of the colonies before the Revolutionary War. It was made from molasses imported from Caribbean sugar plantations. Sometimes the raw material arrived legally; sometimes it was smuggled.

By 1770, the colonies had more than 140 rum distilleries, making about 4.8 million gallons annually. That was on top of the 3.78 million gallons imported each year. Production was concentrated in the Northeast.

American rum was inferior to Caribbean, but the domestic stuff was cheap and available. For example, a gallon of American rum cost 1 shilling and 8 pence in Philadelphia during 1740. The smoother, better Caribbean variety went for 2 shillings and 5 pence. With prices for domestic alcohol so low, almost anybody could afford it. It is difficult to know just how much rum colonists drank in British North America, but one historian estimates that during the 1770s the average adult male may have consumed as much as three pints weekly.

Rum was a powerful economic engine. Demand for it became the foundation of colonial intercoastal and international trade. Distillers exported their wares to England, Ireland, southern Europe, and Africa. The beverage was integral to slaving. Rum for that business was distilled several times to make a concentrated product. This saved storage space on ships, as captains could cut their cargo with water upon arrival in Africa.

Whiskey

The Revolution (1775–1783) meant the decline of rum and the ascendancy of whiskey in America. Whiskey was made in America before the conflict, though its production typically was limited to farmers who had surplus grain. This began to change when war and the Royal Navy made molasses imports expensive and irregular. Denied large quantities of rum's raw material, Americans turned to domestic whiskey. Whiskey gained popularity after the conflict as a new sense of American identity flourished and patriots sought a beverage devoid of English ties.

The new nation's whiskey makers tended to be Scotch-Irish immigrants. Their settlements in Pennsylvania, Maryland, western Virginia, and western North Carolina become hot spots of alcohol production that used a mix of rye and corn. By the late 1700s, Kentucky began developing a reputation for its distillers' skill. Nobody knows if one person can take credit for this, but the whiskey of Bourbon County, Kentucky, gained a national reputation and following. The state had the right resources for making a quality drink. It was blessed with a ready supply of corn, limestone-filtered water, and hardwood for barrels.

Farmers on Virginia’s frontier began making whiskey with corn instead of rye in 1789, but what made it distinctive was aging. The Virginians discovered that charring the inside of oak barrels gave their matured whiskey a superior flavor and dark, rich color. In 1792, western Virginia became the state of Kentucky.

Before the nineteenth century, Kentucky producers started shipping barrels of their whiskey by river to New Orleans. At the end of the long trip, the contents had taken on a distinctive reddish color from the charred barrels in which they were stored. By the early 1800s, Kentucky whiskey resembled modern bourbon. Much later in the next century, people would call this corn whiskey “bourbon.”

Early on, George Washington recognized whiskey's moneymaking potential. After his presidency, he was casting about for a way to increase Mount Vernon's cash flow. James Anderson, his plantation manager, suggested a distillery. By 1798, the father of our country had a solid building in which several stills were bubbling away. Mount Vernon's whiskey production went from 600 gallons in 1797 to 4,500 gallons in 1798 to 11,000 gallons in 1799. Washington died that year, and, at the time, he was one of the largest distillers in the United States.

Cocktails

The age of the cocktail lay far in the future. Colonists, nevertheless, enjoyed alcoholic beverages with such names as Rattle-Skull, Stonewall, Bogus (other spellings: calibogus, callibogus, calabogus, callabogus, calebogus), Blackstrap, Bombo, Mimbo, Whistle Belly, Syllabub, Sling, Toddy, and Flip.

Flips: A flip is a class of mixed drinks. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was first used in 1695 to describe a mixture of beer, rum, and sugar, heated with a red-hot iron ("Thus we live at sea; eat biscuit, and drink flip"). The iron caused the drink to froth, and this frothing (or "flipping") engendered the name. Over time, eggs were added and the proportion of sugar increased, the beer was eliminated, and the drink ceased to be served hot.

The hot beverage known as flip, from which the modern cocktail evolved, has been around since the late 1600s originating first from colonial America. It was a very popular drink in English and American taverns until the 19th century. There were many variations as each tavern would have its own recipe. It was principally a mulled ale, with the addition of rum or brandy, sugar, spices (almost always grated nutmeg), and fresh eggs.

The first bar guide to feature a flip was Jerry Thomas's 1862 How to Mix Drinks; or, The Bon-Vivant's Companion. In this work, Thomas declares that, "The essential in flips of all sorts is to produce the smoothness by repeated pouring back and forward between two vessels and beating up the eggs well in the first instance the sweetening and spices according to taste."

With time, the distinction between egg nog (a spirit, egg, cream, sugar, and spice) and a flip (a spirit, egg, sugar, spice, but no cream) was gradually codified in U.S. bar guides. In recent decades, bar guides have begun to indicate the presence of cream in a flip as optional.

Callibogus (also called bogus): 18th century maritime beverage of eastern North America, especially Newfoundland; a drink made by mixing spruce beer, rum or other liquor and molasses; former also in clipped form calli with specifying word egg, king, etc. The King Calli was a type of flip–a mixture of beer, sugar, spirits, and eggs, which was warmed up by stirring it with a red-hot fire-poker. The heat caramelized the sugars, slightly cooked the egg, and caused the drink to froth up (or ‘flip’) like a milkshake.
- The Dictionary of Newfoundland English (Toronto, 1990)

(Spruce beer was a fermented infusion of beer made from spruce and molasses.)

Joseph Banks (1766) describes callibogus as being made three different ways:

"Liquor in itself is Very Weak are made of three Kinds of Flip Cald here Callibogus, Egg Calli & King Calli the first simply by adding Rum Brandy or Gin If you cannot get Either of the First as much as is agreable The second by heating the first with the Addition of an Egg & Some Sugar the third called King Calli By adding spirit to the Contents of the Copper as soon as it is ready to Put into the Cask & Drinking it hot."
- English naturalist Joseph Banks after his famed 1766 tour of Newfoundland. Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1766: His Diary, Manuscripts and Collections, edited by A.M. Lysaght (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), 139-140.