Here folk had been distilling for rather longer than in Europe, and were blessed with local resources such as sugar, citrus fruit and spices. Probably the world's most enduring cocktail, punch, has its origins in India, of all places. Sherry, then called 'sack', was the drink du jour, and folk would settle down to watch the bear-baiting with tankards of 'sugar sack' (sweetened sherry) or sack-possets (a blend of ale, sherry, eggs, cream, sugar, mace and nutmeg, served warm). In medieval times, both the monks and the aristocracy began to produce their own liqueurs in house (for medicinal reasons, naturally), steeping herbs and spices in home-distilled alcohol, and sweetening to help the medicine go down.īy Shakespeare's time, with palates sweeter, mixing drinks was big news.
Although probably known to the Chinese as early as 1000 BC, the technique reached Europe via the Arabs and then, most probably, the monks, more than two millennia later. And it is this combination of spice, sugar and booze that we find in the first cocktails.ĭistillation added a new layer of possibilities. By medieval times, the rich were flavouring their ales, their meads and metheglin with the new luxury goods – spices and sugars, brought all the way from the East by land and sea. From beer spiked with intoxicants such as henbane through to wine infused with thyme, it's fair to say that the desire both to increase the mood-altering effects of booze and to improve the taste of an indifferent raw product have been with the human race for millennia.īut the arrival of sugar opened up a new era in producing mixed drinks. The Greeks flavoured their wine with everything from honey to seawater in pagan England, wassail, an aromatic blend based on cider, was served in communal cups and bowls to celebrate the harvest. 3000 years ago the Minoan Cretans were blending a proto-cocktail of beer, mead and wine in Homer's Iliad, slave-girls prepared concoctions of wine, cheese, honey and raw onions.Īdding a hint of spice was nothing new, either. Mixing drinksįor almost as long as people have been drinking alcohol (and most believe that wine is at least 10,000 years old and beer and mead rather older), they have been mixing their drinks.
From early China to laser cocktails via the saloons of the Wild West, mixed drinks have a surprisingly long history.
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