In many historical novels I’ve heard, it seems like wine is a basic necessity. The nobles and generals have to procure it for their soldiers, their servants and even their slaves, and the instances when a protagonist drinks water can be counted on one hand. Is that accurate? Wasn’t it easier and cheaper to drink water?

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

People did drink water, but the cleanliness of the water was quite iffy, so people tended to drink alcohol as it was safer.

This isn’t entirely true in my understanding, Steven.

My own learning as a pure layman is that most people did drink mostly water. When clean water was available (or even not-that-clean-but-passable-water) that was what they drank.

However.

Much historical fiction, and indeed much historical writing, takes place in contexts where clean water wasn’t readily available, or with social classes that had ready access to the finer things in life. Armies on the march tended to befoul the fuck out of any water source they came across. Cities were just cesspits of disease, poisoning the rivers and water tables they were built on for leagues around. And in those contexts people are going to be drinking beverages with alcohol in them because, indeed, it is either much safer, or they’re of a social class where they can afford it. Because we’re not reading about the 90% of the country that lives a rural lifestyle and mostly drinks mostly water they pull from wells, streams, and rivers, with the occasional alcoholic drink mixed in.

I could be wrong here, tho.

Consider this a placeholder until I find the post where I did the research on the royal decree that limited inns to one per village, because people liked to drink just that damn much.