MDMD drinking in colonial America

[Don Corathers]

Let's have a drink.

"One may safely assume, then, that abstemious colonials were few and far
between. While precise consumption figures are lacking, informed estimates
suggest that by the 1790s an average American over fifteen years old drank
just under six gallons of absolute alcohol each year. That represented some
thirty-four gallons of beer and cider, ... slightly over five gallons of
distilled liquors, . and under a gallon of wine.. Because this is an average
figure, calculated from the entire drinking-age population, including
nondrinkers, the level of consumption probably was much higher for actual
drinkers. But even six gallons is a formidable amount. The comparable modern
average is less than 2.8 gallons per capita. To put it starkly, America's
colonists were serious drinkers."

    --Drinking in America, Mark Lender and James Martin, 1987

Note the lopsided grain to grape ratio.

Don Corathers



----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <millison at online-journalist.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2001 12:58 PM
Subject: MDMD drinking in colonial America


> Not to say that Pynchon seems to be striving for historical versimilitude
> above all other effects, but historians do record that early American
> colonists drank an awful lot.