One can understand the staggering bar bill at a famous party for George Washington in Philadelphia in 1787—about $15,000 in today’s money—when one considers the decade of toil and tribulation that preceded the party in the Revolution. Little more than 10 years earlier, the United States had not even existed, and now, after a series of improbable victories by Washington and his revolutionary brethren, they had not only defeated the world’s most powerful empire but created a constitution for a new kind of government in Philadelphia. Now that the pens were dry, it was time to moisten the lips and celebrate like it was 1799.
In fact, if you look at the bar bill from that night at the City Tavern – the Founding Fathers’ favorite bar – it may have been one of the biggest shags in history. The bill, which was rediscovered by a Pepperdine University professor, shows an impressive amount of alcohol consumed for the evening. The 55 guests drank: 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of red wine, eight bottles of whiskey, 22 bottles of porter, eight bottles of cider, 12 bottles of beer and seven bowls of punch. The 16 servants and musicians also got their own supplies, which amounted to 16 more bottles of red wine, five bottles of Madeira and seven bowls of punch. One can only assume that each of them had a taste of Valley Forge behind their eyes the next morning.
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Drinking in the style of the 18th century
As shocking as the sheer amount of alcohol may seem to today’s eyes, this was for 18th Century. That’s because Americans drank significantly more back then. Americans consumed about 5.8 gallons of pure alcohol per person of drinking age annually. That doesn’t mean 5.8 gallons of Swedish brand vodka, but 99% pure alcohol. Today, Americans’ drinking habits are not so exorbitant, averaging just 2.3 gallons per year. Even God was on alcohol’s side, according to the famous Puritan preacher Increase Mather, who called alcohol “God’s good creation.”
Alcohol was often safer than water back then, which may have been another reason Washington tried making wine. Sure, barrels of red wine standing on end could result in a hangover the next day, but that was better than cholera, E. coli, typhus, and the many other waterborne pathogens that regularly decimated American communities of the era. At least Washington’s favorite breakfast food could alleviate the former. That was at least another good reason for Washington to include “a quart of good pine or malt beer” in his army’s daily rations, and for Congress to increase that amount to “half a gill of rum, brandy, or whiskey” per day in 1790. Clearly, the Constitution, to which Washington and his friends had elevated their drinking binges just three years earlier, served its purpose.
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