Such caveats and the expense of producing wine helped the beverage quickly gain more cachet(威望)than beer. Wine was originally associated with social elites and religious activities.

　　Wine snobbery may be nearly as old as wine itself. Greeks and Romans produced many grades of wine for various social classes.

　　The quest for quality became an economic engine and later drove cultural expansion.

　　"Once you had regions [like Greece and Rome] that could distinguish themselves as making good stuff, it gave them an economic boost," Bisson said. "Beer just wasn’t as special."

　　Spirits

　　Hard liquor, particularly brandy and rum, placated (安抚)sailors during the long sea voyages of the Age of Exploration, when European powers plied the seas during the 15th, 16th, and early 17th centuries.

　　Rum played a crucial part of the triangular trade between Britain, Africa, and the North American colonies that once dominated the Atlantic economy.

　　Standage also suggests that rum may have been more responsible than tea for the independence movement in Britain’s American colonies.

　　"Distilling molasses for rum was very important to the New England economy," he explained. "When the British tried to tax molasses it struck at the heart of the economy. The idea of ’no taxation without representation’ originated with molasses and sugar. Only at the end did it refer to tea."

　　Great Britain’s longtime superiority at sea may also owe a debt to its navy’s drink of rum-based choice, grog(掺水烈酒),which was made a compulsory beverage for sailors in the late 18th century.

　　"They would make grog with rum, water, and lemon or lime juice," Standage said. "This improved the taste but also reduced illness and scurvy. Fleet physicians thought that this had doubled the efficiency of the fleet."