the joys of drink

not so much emotions but as a repressed scotsman, drink is always a good conduit to emotional expression, some titbits from a review of Iain Gately’s book, Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol.

In sixteenth-century Japan, it was an insult to your host to stay sober, so guests who couldn’t drink would pretend to be drunk and even hungover “by sending thank-you letters deliberately late, written in shaky characters.

Aztecs liked fermented sap, but had a legal drinking age (52) higher than their average life expectancy—although every four years they’d hold a New Year’s festival called “Drunkenness of Children,” at which all citizens, including toddlers, were required to drink.

And Egyptian wine connoisseurs rated their drinks by stacking up the word nfr, meaning good (the best was nfr nfr nfr).