Drinking Patterns and the Shaping of Inclusion and Eccentricity:

From Ancient Greek Wine to American Cocktail

Jordi Pmias & Mart Grau
Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona

Key Words: Social History of Alcohol, Cultural Construction of Drinking, Greek
Civilization, American Culture.


0

As usually happens with the consumption of stimulating products (tobacco,
coffee), alcohol has a prominent role in socialization processes, in the building
of a large variety of groupings. Even if it does contain calories and some
nutrients, alcohol consumption is by no means determined biologically. To live,
one needs to eat but does not need to drink alcohol. Thus alcohol, freed from
any constriction of nature, is revealed as a complex form of social expression,
fully embodied in the sphere of culture.
1


Consumption of superfluous products or, if we prefer, luxury products
constitutes a powerful tool for social inclusion. In this paper, we take this verit
acquise as a starting point.
2
A quick glance at linguistic uses provides us with
hints in the same direction: whereas the English term luxury food insists on its
socio-economic side, and the French labeling of excitants or stimulants in the
pharmacologic and psychological aspects, the corresponding German word
clearly reflects a social practice:
3
Genumittel (in etymological connection with
Geno companion, comrade) are the products shared by the members of a
group for pleasure (genieen).

Indeed, even if drinks have not attracted the attention of prestigious
anthropologists and sociologists as much as the study of food has,
4
there is
general agreement on their deep social significance and, above all, on the
significance of patterns and behavior required by each drink. The inclusive and
cohesive role of alcohol ensures the firm anchorage of an individual to a group.
At the same time, leaving aside this associative function, drinks are the
reflection of even more complex relationships: those marked by exception and
exclusion. Exceptionality is granted to the elites, as recognition of their higher
status. Exclusion is the consequence of transgression, the fate of those
unwilling or unable to comply with the norms. Of course, those norms are to be
found in a wide range of situations, from coded in sacred prescriptions to
implicit in diffuse social habits. But they are always accompanied by a
compelling element: the risk of being left out.

When facing drinking phenomena, sociological critique has especially focused
on the significance of drinking habits and rituals within a given grouping, with an

1
Cf. Edmunds (1998, 103).
2
See, for instance, the SIRC report (2000).
3
Cf. Hengartner & Merki (2001, 11-15).
4
But see the contributions collected by Douglas (1987).

2
eye to their social uses and functions. Thus, this functionalist and instrumental
approach has dealt more with the social dimension of drinking than with drinks
themselves in society. We will attempt to look at the specific, socially
constructed nature of drinks in different contexts, such as wine, milk, beer, and
even the dry martini.


1

Even though the actual reach of wine interdiction for women in Greece and
Rome has been under discussion, several witnesses confirm that wine
consumption was a mans privilege.
5
Despite its doubtful historical value, from a
cultural point of view the theory that kissing among relatives was invented so
that male family members could detect alcohol consumption of their women is
fully revealing.
6


In Classical Greece, women had access to wine only in very specific religious
contexts, especially during the Thesmophoria. These celebrations in honor of
the goddess Demeter stood among the more universally diffused in the Greek
world.
7
In Athens, the three days of the celebration marked a caesura in the
institutional order: trials were suspended, prisoners were freed, and the political
status quo was interrupted. Only in this context women were entitled to meet in
a central location of the polis and organize themselves socially under the
leadership of their own rchousai.
8


Behind this celebration, some authors recognize the features of rituals
conveying a crisis message. These momentary situations are known as periods
of license, rituals of rebellion, rituals of conflict, legitimate rebellions, or with
the German terms of legale Anarchie, Ventilsitten o Ausnahmezeiten. The
liberating effects of these practices have been widely stressed in specialized
literature: they allow for the expulsion of pressures that constrict the social body
and thus periodically alleviate but above all in a controlled way! the
oppressed strata. In parallel with this psychosocial function, the reversal rituals
perform a legitimating function of the existing status quo, in the measure that
the ruling order is confirmed e contrario by the transitory enactment of an
upside down world. So the threat of a return to a pre-cultural stage is
materialized.
9


In this atmosphere of exceptionality, women necessarily assume a central role.
On the first day of the Thesmophoria (known as Anodos), women are in charge
of sacrifices, an extraordinary privilege from which they are regularly
excluded.
10
Similarly, on the third and last day of the festival (known as
Kalligeneia) women exchange verbal obscenities, using unrestrained indecent

5
On the historical value of this prohibition see the different points of view discussed by
Versnel (1994, 264).
6
See Versnel (1994, 229).
7
See Burkert (1985, 242).
8
Cf. Is. VIII 19: rchein eis t Thesmophria.
9
Cf. Versnel (1987, 132 ff.).
10
Although women were not precluded from meat consumption deriving from bloody sacrifice.
See Detienne (1979, 183 ff.), and rejection by Osborne (2000).

3
language (aischrologa), something that in normal situations only men can do.
Therefore, this abnormal and somewhat artificial context showed how womens
access to wine was an alarming sign of crisis, and how, in the right order of
things, wine should be kept in the mens exclusive domain.

This is further confirmed by the cultural meaning of opposite drinks. Milk and
honey, in polar opposition with wine, clearly fall into the sphere of female and
child. As shown by Fritz Graf (1980), milk and honey constitute the liquid marks
of marginal groups or situations, in contrast with the supreme values of
civilization that wine substantiates! whenever mixed with water! This polarity
worked both within the community and outwards. Milk consumption is attributed
to marginal sects in the polis, such as the Pythagoreans, but also to peoples
such as the Scythes or the Massagetai, epitomes of the barbarian other.
11


The symbolic power of wine in Greek anthropology is even more rich and
complex: its cultural centrality and normality does not preclude some threats
or fears. Moderation is essential, because wine can lead to foolish promises,
unattainable challenges, ungrounded quarrels and futile skirmishes. For good or
evil, wine is the door to an alternative reality, a means to widen the meager
boundaries of the hic et nunc. Together with theatre, wine becomes a rich
source of illusion, a way out from normal life and a momentary expansion of
the individual horizons .
12
In the Olympic family, the god who promotes wine
consumption, Dionysus, is nothing less than a xnos, a Greek word that can
mean stranger but also strange, bizarre, just as the German fremd and the Latin
alienus.
13
Seen as a Dionysiac product, wine emerges as the dividing line
between spheres, as a powerful shaper of social spaces. But above all, wine is
the expression of an eccentric and centrifugal movement that flies away from
the sphere of intimacy and the sphere of everyday life. So besides being gender
markers, wine and milk play a crucial role in defining spaces and spheres, in
shaping intimacy and eccentricity.

Here we need to stress that some authors have questioned the use of notions
such as everyday life or intimacy when applied to pre-modern societies. In
their view, those notions were not common among the ancient Greeks, but
modern contructions that we should not project back to ancient communities.
Acording to this, one would tend to think that only capitalist alienation gave way
to a zealous keeping of a domain of intimacy
14
. On the contrary, it can be
argued that the notions of day and daytime and the thinking about what kind
of life the individual can lead in accordance with a daily routine, largely

11
See Graf (1980). Cf. Hartog (2001, 267 ff.).
12
See Henrichs (1993, 14). Not surprisingly wine has been considered in its sakrale
Funktion als Mittler zwischen profaner und heiliger Welt, zwischen Menschen und Gttern
(Spode, 2001, 49). Also not suprisingly, authorities eventually needed to control rituals related
to wine consumption and to Dionysiac religion. In Rome, the senatus consultus de
Bacchanalibus (in 186 BCE), which prohibited under penalty of death meetings of initiates in
mystery bacchic cults, represents an extreme case.
13
The modern construction of Dionysus as the conceptualization of the other is a product of
the Parisian quipe pioneered by Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant (notwithstanding
their debt to Louis Gernet; cf. Henrichs, 1993, 31 ff.).
14
See in particular Lefebvre (1968).

4
precedes the rise of capitalism.
15
On the other hand, ancient religions appear as
a coherent corpus of feasts and celebrations that interrupt and articulate
everyday life all year long. Even if they do not always signal a breaking of the
rules or an upturning of order, feasts always constitute a momentary gap that
inaugurates a new social code, different from the one that rules normal activity
in a given group.
16
Be as it may, wine consumption in a Dionysiac context
should be seen as an expression of dissolution or of shifting of the limits of
everyday experience.
17



2

Besides constituting a social vector inside a community, their communication
potential makes drinks a vehicle for the expression of wider cultural cleavages
between communities. Like food, drinking habits and kinds of drinks have been
presented throughout history as distinctive marks that reflect the overall
essence of a community, underlining specific differences in front of other
groups. This goes well beyond the relatively nave stereotypes ad usum today,
mainly coined by modern mass tourism. In rejecting any kind of essentialism in
the definition of identities, modern sociology and anthropology have disclosed a
number of constructions that lay in the basis of self-definitions, in the ancient
world as in todays societies
18
. Objects that help self-definition are nothing but
culturally constructed, and this construction is not produced in isolation but by
contrast: the opposition with the other reflects, like in a mirror, the I.
19


Indeed, the Hochkulturen know, from the very onset, a strong opposition
between beer and wine. In the fourth millennium BCE, Sumerians and
Egyptians produced a kind of drink similar to modern wine. But much more
widespread than wine was beer. Wine was reserved for the elites and, most of
all, consecrated to religious cult.
20
That was only the beginning of an ever-
lasting story of cultural cleavages involving wine and beer. With time, this
oppositon was instrumented for political reasons. In Europe, such a dispute
opposing wine drinkers and beer drinkers has experienced periodic
resurgences up to the present day. Attempts have been made to draw a clear
borderline enclosing wine producing and wine consuming areas, as a territory
sharing common values and a common background. According to this view, the
divide would revive the old Roman limes. To some, this is no less than

15
See on this issue the appraisals by Giulia Sissa and Marcel Detienne (1989, 13 ff.).
16
Cf. Calame (1982-1983). Finally, as Jean-Pierre Vernant has shown, Greek religious
thought is entirely capable of conceptualizating notions of movement and permanence, from the
firmness of the hearth to the centrifugal departure from the oikos (cf. Vernant, 1991 [orig.
1963]).
17
As for the religious experiences undertaken by the followers of Dionysus, see Henrichs
(1993, 14-15).
18
For the Greek world, and the constructions of its/their identity/identities, we cite a single
work only, for its massive impact: Hartog (2001; orig. 1981). See also Hall (1997).
19
The notion of otherness, with its philosophical ramifications (Martin Buber, Emmanuel
Lvinas), has reached several academic spheres. For the construction of the Oriental other,
and the mirroring of the Occidental identity, see Sad (1978).
20
Die getreidenreichen Bewsserungskulturen entschieden sich fr das Bier Traubenwein
war den Reichen und dem Kultus vorbehalten (Spode, 2001, 47).

5
recognition of the contradictory nature of civilized sophisticated Mediterranean
peoples, as opposed to Northeners of Germanic descent.

In this dynamics of indentity-building, France stands out as a case in point: the
ideological power of wine as a national product is shown with clarity. As Barthes
has argued, in the French imaginarium, wine expresses conviviality within the
group and virility in the individual but, above all, shows the boundaries of the
national character.
21
Nothing reflects more closely the essential frenchness of
red wine as the public commotion provoked by Mr. Coty when taking office as
the countrys Prime Minister: he dared to show himself in press photographies
with a bottle of beer at home, instead of mandatory red wine.


3

The limitations of an instrumental and functionalist approach to alcohol
consumption are obvious when we tackle the study of certain culturally complex
drinks. As one of the best modern examples of this, we can look at the symbolic
power and nuanced meanings of cocktails, and especially of the dry martini, in
20th century American culture. As demonstrated by Lowell Edmunds (1998),
the dry martini appears as a complex and sophisticated symbol, given its
suitability to convey messages, sometimes simple, but sometimes ambiguous
and contradictory. Therefore, we should explore to what extent this drink can
express and interpret notions of movement and space, taking into account its
undeniable iconographic projection. Can we speak of a fundamental impact of
dry martini on the contemporary notions of intimacy and eccentricity? How can
we describe the passage from a fundamentally plastic and iconic symbol to a
social vector?

The mystery about the dry martini is how it can be both elitist (only the initiated
drink it, in exquisite loneliness, at the end of a hectic day) and national
(strangers just dont know how to mix a dry martini). Both class divide and
national consensus are cointained in the dry martini. Dry martini drinkers may
be despised by American uninitiated individuals but hardly anyone would deny
that the dry martini is a milestone of American heritage, its true knowledge
being banned to strangers. The dry martini develops as a symbol throughout
the 20th century, and the roots of its unusual combination of characters can be
found in the theories of individualism that spread since the second half of the
19th century such as the Nietzschean superman and related schools of
thought. They reconcile egocentrism and community engagement in a single
message. In American culture, cosmopolitan leadership and down-to-earth
melting pot form a whole that one can even drink.

The right proportions of gin (of Dutch origin), vermouth (French or Italian) and
olive (Greek) result in a genuine American product. At first sight, a combination
of foreign products is behind the dry martini, but its independent character and
potential for self-representation were evident from the beginning.
22
Cocktails,
and especially dry martini, became statesmens and diplomats favourite drink

21
See Barthes (1970).
22
Cf. DeVoto (1951, 22): [The martini is the] supreme American gift to world culture .

6
between 1930 and 1960. Some American presidents were aware of the value of
dry martini as an ideological tool as well as a means to stage world dominance
in meetings abroad.
23
Somehow, by its both simple and sophisticated formula,
as well as by the evolving proportion of its ingredients tending to a chmeric
dryness, the dry martini appears as a compendium of cosmopolitan American
culture and politics in the 20th century world.

At the same time, though, the dry martinis contribution to American identity
entails detachment and competition vis--vis other nations.
24
The telling of
uncountable anecdotes strenghtens this reality by stressing the nightmares of
any American who insists on ordering a dry martini when abroad.
25
As a matter
of fact conventional wisdom would claim the secrets of a perfect dry martini
are not accessible to foreign would-be connoisseurs.

On the other hand, like wine in ancient Greece, the dry martini is a product
perfectly integrated into the male sphere.
26
As a male drink, the cocktail projects
itself outwards, in accordance with the eccentric tendencies that it sparks. But
also, like ancient Greek wine, it is much more than a gender marker in society.
With female alcohol consumption increasing since the turning of the 19th
century, a phenomenon of reversal could be at work.
27


Egalitarian discourses in the mid-20th century accentuated the expansion of the
cocktail to womens spheres. Thus we can wonder if, once firmly installed in the
female sphere, cocktails will embrace new meanings in the opposite direction,
towards the definition of intimacy ties. By so doing, the dry martini could
effectively mirror new developments in American-led world society: on the one
hand, in accessing to leadership, women assume male-originated power icons;
on the other hand, individuals will best show engagement with the collectivity by
protecting family seclusion.





23
Cf. Edmunds (1998, 3): American presidents wielded the Martini in meetings with their
Soviet counterparts in the 1940s and 1950s . US presidents consumers of dry martini: Hoover,
Roosvelt, Nixon, Ford and G. Bush.
24
See above n. 19.
25
Cf. Edmunds (1998, 3-7): The Martini is American it is not European, Asian, or African .
26
Cf. Edmunds (1998, 18-22): The Martini is a mans, not a womans, drink .
27
Cf. Edmunds (2002, 53): Womens moderate at-home drinking was to set the pattern for
alcoholic consumption in the twentieth century . As shown by, C. G. Murdock (1998, 105),
female alcohol at home consumption in Victorian America, legitimized as no other beverage
could alcohol consumption within the home .

7
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