24 Jun Want to drink like a founding father? Pour some cider, Madeira, whiskey and more
It’s Wine Festival week here in Telluride, so why not as Michelle Locke, an Associated Press writer puts it, pour some cider, Madeira, whiskey and wine and drink like our founding fathers.
You know George Washington and John Hancock as founding fathers. But what about George Washington, successful whiskey distiller? Or John Hancock, fortified wine importer?
Turns out some of that patriot spirit came in bottles.
“I was surprised at how much people drank,” says Corin Hirsch, who chronicled the drinking habits of colonial-era Americans in her recently released book “Forgotten Drinks of Colonial New England: From Flips and Rattle-Skulls to Switchel and Spruce Beer.”
“People were starting their days with alcohol and ending their days with alcohol,” says Hirsch. “It was woven into the culture in fundamental ways.”
Take John Adams, second president of the United States and father of the sixth, who started each day with a tankard of cider. Adams also served as lawyer for Hancock, who got into a kerfuffle in 1768 when the British seized his sloop, the Liberty, in Boston Harbor, claiming — charges that didn’t stick — that Hancock had avoided paying duties on most of his shipment of Madeira, a fortified wine.
Madeira made sense as a New World drink because it developed its character through being exposed to heat and sloshing around in barrels at sea. Sherry, also fortified, was also popular.
The one thing colonials weren’t likely to drink was water, considered a very dubious beverage.
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