Alcoholic beverage

An alcoholic beverage is any drink that contains alcohol, a central nervous system depressant. They are typically divided into three classes: beers, wines, and spirits; with alcohol content typically between 3% and 50%. The exact amount on which a beverage is considered alcoholic differs by country, with some considering drinks containing less than 0.5% to be non-alcoholic. These beverages are primarily consumed for the psychoactive effects that they produce.
Many societies have a distinct drinking culture, in which alcoholic drinks are integrated into parties. Most countries have laws regulating the production, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages. Some regulations require the labeling of the percentage alcohol content and the use of a warning label. Some countries ban the consumption of alcoholic drinks, but they are legal in most parts of the world. The temperance movement advocates against the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The global alcoholic drink industry exceeded $1.5 trillion in 2017. Alcohol is one of the most widely used recreational drugs in the world, and about 33% of all humans currently drink alcohol. In 2015, among Americans, 86% of adults had consumed alcohol at some point, with 70% drinking it in the last year and 56% in the last month. Several other animals are affected by alcohol similarly to humans and, once they consume it, will consume it again if given the opportunity; however, humans are the only species known to produce alcoholic drinks intentionally.
Alcohol is a depressant, a class of psychoactive drug that slows down activity in the central nervous system. In low doses it causes euphoria, reduces anxiety, and increases sociability. In higher doses, it causes drunkenness, stupor, unconsciousness, or death. Long-term use can lead to alcoholism, an increased risk of developing several types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and physical dependence. Alcohol is classified as a group 1 carcinogen. In 2023, a World Health Organization news release said that "the risk to the drinker's health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage."

History

Prehistory

Discovery of late Stone Age jugs suggests that intentionally fermented drinks existed at least as early as the Neolithic period.
The oldest verifiable brewery has been found in a prehistoric burial site in a cave near Haifa in modern-day Israel. Researchers have found residue of 13,000-year-old beer that they think might have been used for ritual feasts to honor the dead. The traces of a wheat-and-barley-based alcohol were found in stone mortars carved into the cave floor.

Ancient period

The Carmona Wine Urn is a first century Roman glass urn containing intact wine. Discovered in 2019 in Carmona, Spain during excavations of the city's western Roman necropolis, analysis of the urn's contents five years after has deemed the vessel the oldest surviving wine in the world, surpassing the previous record holder, the Speyer wine bottle by three centuries.
Beer was likely brewed from barley as early as 13,000 years ago in the Middle East. Pliny the Elder wrote about the golden age of winemaking in Rome, the 2nd century BCE, when vineyards were planted.
Examination and analysis of ancient pottery jars from the neolithic village of Jiahu in the Henan province of northern China revealed residue left behind by the alcoholic drinks they had once contained. Chemical analysis of the residue confirmed that a fermented drink made of grape and hawthorn fruit wine, honey mead and rice beer was being produced in 7000–5600 BC. The residence in which the jar was discovered and other houses in the same village were found to contain many such jars suggesting that wine was an important part of their diet.
The earliest evidence of winemaking was dated at 6,000 to 5,800 BCE in Georgia in the South Caucasus. Excavations surrounding Neolithic settlements there unearthed grape pips of a variety which differed from those of wild grapes, pointing to deliberate cultivation, and local pottery dated to approximately 6000 BCE was decorated with depictions of celebrating human figures.
The earliest clear chemical evidence of beer produced from barley dates to about 3500–3100 BCE, from the site of Godin Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran. At a site dating to 3100-2900 BCE, a pottery vessel containing residue of alcoholic barley was discovered, possibly serving as the earliest proof of beer brewing in the region. However, it is unclear whether it was meant for intoxication or nourishment.
Celtic people were known to have been making types of alcoholic cider as early as 3000 BCE. and wine was consumed in Classical Greece at breakfast or at symposia, and in the 1st century BCE.
Archaeological finds as well as ancient documentation serve as testimony to the popularity and abundance of alcohol in the Sumerian society. Access to alcohol was regulated, the social elite indulged in it and it served as sacrificial offerings to the gods. In Sumerian culture Alcohol was also a means for happiness. In the epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu the wild man drinks seven jugs of beer, becomes elated and sings with joy. Other characters routinely drink water, but drink alcohol when celebrating. During the new year celebrations, the ceremonial reenactment of the drunken union between the king of Uruk and the high priestess of Ishtar, the goddess of procreation, symbolized the genesis of Ninkasi, the beer goddess. A hymn to Ninkasi gives a detailed description of hash production in Sumer, involving the fermentation of bread and the addition of grapes and honey, resulting in an unfiltered brew drunk through straws.
In Hierakonpolis, Egypt, the remains of a brewery dating to circa 3400 BCE was unearthed, with an estimated yield of up to 1135 litres of brew per day. Wine was a symbol of power and was imported from abroad, hence it was reserved for royalty and the social elite, while beer was the drink of common society. In the tomb of the Scorpion king, who ruled Hierakonpolis when the brewery was built, approximately 700 wine jars imported from the southern Levant were unearthed. Financial documents recorded that the daily ration of beer for the workers who built the pyramids of Giza was nearly 4 litres, and modern reproductions of the ancient recipe produced a brew weighed in at 5 percent ABV, the same as that of the modern day pint. Despite the many Egyptian sources describing brewing methods, very few discuss intoxication. However, an annual celebration of the "Drunkenness of Hathor" commemorated the intoxication of the goddess Sekhmet/Hathor with beer disguised as blood by other gods, causing her to fall into a drunken stupor and allowing them to take control over creation, an act which prevented her from exterminating humanity. In honor of this deed a red coloured alcohol was drunk in large quantities during the festival causing similar intoxicated stupors. Osiris was also associated with wine, as his death and resurrection were compared to the cycle of withering and regrowth of the vine during the winter and spring. The Oag festival, dedicated to Osiris, was marked by the drinking of wine, and during the late dynastic period the devotees of Osiris would offer prayers and conduct rituals, after which they would drink wine and consume bread, believing that they had been transubstantiated in to the flesh and blood of Osiris. Multiple amphorae were discovered in the graves of pharaohs and elites as provisions for the afterlife and as offerings to Osiris, commonly with labels detailing their origin, maker, and date. Over time, labels eventually included assessments of quality as well, such as "good," "very good," or "very very good," alongside provenance, and it was believed that certain vintages improved with age. Archaeological findings reveal that some wines buried with their owners were several decades old, exceeding the average life expectancy, and therefore assumed to have outlived their creators.

Medieval period

Medieval Middle East

Medieval Muslim chemists such as Jābir ibn Ḥayyān and Abū Bakr al-Rāzī experimented extensively with the distillation of various substances. The distillation of wine is attested in Arabic works attributed to al-Kindī and to al-Fārābī, and in the 28th book of al-Zahrāwī's Kitāb al-Taṣrīf. 12th century: The process of distillation spread from the Middle East to Italy, where distilled alcoholic drinks were recorded in the mid-12th century.

Medieval Europe

In Italy, the works of Taddeo Alderotti describe a method for concentrating alcohol involving repeated fractional distillation through a water-cooled still. By the early 14th century, distilled alcoholic drinks had spread throughout the European continent. Distillation spread to Ireland and Scotland no later than the 15th century, as did the common European practice of distilling "aqua vitae", primarily for medicinal purposes.

Early modern period

in 1690, England passed "An Act for the Encouraging of the Distillation of Brandy and Spirits from Corn" Alcoholic beverages played an important role in the Thirteen Colonies from their early days when drinking wine and beer at that time was safer than drinking water – which was usually taken from sources also used to dispose of sewage and garbage. Drinking hard liquor was common occurrence in early nineteenth-century United States.
The Whiskey Rebellion was a violent tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. Beer was difficult to transport and spoiled more easily than rum and whiskey.

Modern period

The Rum Rebellion of 1808 was a coup d'état in the then-British penal colony of New South Wales, staged by the New South Wales Corps in order to depose Governor William Bligh. Australia's first and only military coup, its name derives from the illicit rum trade of early Sydney, over which the 'Rum Corps', as it became known, maintained a monopoly. During the first half of the 19th century, it was widely referred to in Australia as the Great Rebellion. The alcohol monopoly system has a long history in various countries, often implemented to limit the availability and consumption of alcohol for public health and social welfare reasons.
The alcohol monopoly was created in the Swedish town of Falun in 1850, to prevent overconsumption and reduce the profit motive for sales of alcohol. It later went all over the country in 1905 when the Swedish parliament ordered all sales of vodka to be done via local alcohol monopolies. In 1894, the Russian Empire established a state monopoly on vodka, which became a major source of revenue for the Russian government.
Later in the nineteenth century opposition to alcohol grew in the form of the temperance movement, in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Scandinavia and India, and it eventually led to national prohibitions in Canada, Norway, Finland, and the United States, as well as provincial prohibition in India.