During this dry(ish) January* I’ve been reading the truly excellent Tough Guide to Fantasy Land by the incredible Diana Wynne Jones, and a couple of entries stuck with me: beer and wine. Both of which foam, and are delivered in tankards, apparently. It got me thinking about the mentions of alcohol in fantasy and how narrowly it tends to be defined within world-building. There might occasionally be a round of shots being done, but generally it really is cheap beer or expensive wines and nothing in between. My memory is pretty lousy, but the only exception that springs to mind is the series of bottles that sit on the shelf in The Mended Drum in Ankh Morpork that ‘no self-respecting barman ever expects to actually sell’, and the Screaming Orgasm cocktail from the same Discworld. That attention to detail is perhaps what we came to expect from Pratchett, but other talented fantasy worldbuilders exist - so where are the cocktails, liqueurs and fancy spirits at? Or perhaps I’ve been so absorbed in the plot, that I’ve missed those details!
Despite conversations about the age and ease of distillation versus fermentation, it seems that much of the reason that beer and wine dominate in fantasy settings is simply because of familiarity. Fantasy is often based in a quasi-medieval environment, and part of meeting those expectations is a world filled with taverns, dancing and ale. Beer is cheap, easy, and able to fade into the storytelling background much more easily than ordering a Cosmopolitan or a Lavender Martini, which many readers could find jarring. Let’s be honest, many modern rural pubs would struggle to accommodate the fanciest of cocktails, so perhaps we shouldn’t expect it of our fantasy settings either.
This all led me down a delightful rabbit hole that eventually ended at the wonderful resource of the Food Timeline. This shows the earliest known use of many foods and drinks - did you know that marshmallows were first made in around 2000BC?! With chocolate following around 1500BC…so let’s get some s’mores and hot chocolate around the campfire in our fantasy worlds, there’s no excuse! Thankfully, we can leave the Gatorade and Red Bull safely in the 20th century and out of our fantasy worlds. I definitely recommend having a browse on the site, but be prepared to lose several hours of your day!
*dry in the alcohol sense, not the weather, given the severe floods there’ve been in the local area this month
My first epic fantasy was for adults and contained a lot of drinking. (I drink wine myself.). The one I'm currently working on is for 13 and older, so there is minimal drinking confined to the adults. It has felt weirdly strange to me to have such little drinking in the tale. Almost like a Dry January. 😀