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Beverages are important at wedding receptions, and how freely the drinks flow, in alcohol-drinking cultures, is a candid indicator of the wedding budget. Catering venues often offer a cocktail hour before opening the doors to the seating area, and drinks may include champagne flowing from fountains or vodka streaming down carved ice sculpture “runways.” The wedding toast, a focal point of the reception, stems from a time when unions between members of warring factions could serve to forge peace. The father of the bride drank from a communal cup, proving the wine was not poisoned. The clinking glasses, wine spilling from one glass to another, may also have helped ensure that drinks were not contaminated. The term “toast” may date from a time when spirits were often rancid, and a piece of spiced bread was put into the cup to improve the flavor.
Toasting at celebrations is ancient and nearly universal, and its appeal may lie in that it includes all five senses: taste, sight, touch, and smell, complemented by inspirational words and the sound of the glasses clinking.1 Toasting superstitions abound, one being that the clinking of glass scares away evil spirits or the Devil, said to be repelled by bell-like sounds.
The touching of glasses can be considered a form of contact and sharing, but it has the sanitary benefit of stopping short of drinking from a common vessel. The practice of smashing glasses, prevalent in Russia, among other places, is an extension of this concept, the breakage lending finality to an oath and establishing that no other toast from that same glass can diminish or compete with the last pledge.2 Many Polish Americans present bread and salt to newlyweds arriving at a reception, with the bread representing a life with no hunger and salt acting as a reminder of life’s struggles. Next the couple is given two glasses, one filled with vodka and one with water. The bride, not knowing which is which, chooses one and drinks it, while the groom gets the remaining glass. Whoever gets the vodka, it is said, will be the boss at home. After the toast, the glasses are smashed, and if they break, it brings good luck.3
Some regions in Italy also have the tradition of shattering the glass after toasting, with the fragments counted and meant to symbolize the number of years the couple will be together. Jewish weddings include the ceremonial drinking of wine or juice from Kiddush cups, and after the blessings, the groom breaks the cup with his right foot, as remembrance of either the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem or the fragility of life. Anyone who has spent time working in the hospitality business knows that the glass, wrapped in a linen napkin and broken symbolically, is usually a lightbulb, which breaks easily, does not create sharp shards, and is inexpensive.
Contemporary culture has appropriated and revised traditions like toasting, with a noteworthy example being the modern practice of “pouring one out,” in which alcohol is tipped out onto the ground in a salute to a lost loved one or friend. The deceased hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur rapped about this in 1994’s “Pour Out a Little Liquor.”4 In Shakur’s accompanying music video, the performers seem to be drinking “forties” (large forty-ounce bottles, usually containing malt liquor like Old English or Mickey’s Big Mouth) out of paper bags.
A rap song in context with a wedding toast may at first seem a stretch, but libation rituals are traditional in African weddings and common in modern African American ceremonies. In all instances the beverage is poured out, and in fact wasted, so that the lack of drinking more than drinking carries significance and pays homage to those unable to be present.
Revolutionary-era weddings featured a punch made from Jamaican spirits, and once the punch bowl was emptied, it was common for the men to race one another; the winner, the fastest who displayed the least signs of drunkenness, received a bottle of wine as a prize.5 Public drunkenness has had varying degrees of acceptability throughout the ages, and weddings are a well-known occasion for overimbibing.
There is a story that in the eleventh century Princess Matilda of Flanders rebuffed William the Conqueror when he proposed to her, but after he angrily pitched her into the mud and beat her, she was so smitten with his manliness that she agreed to marry him. The festivities, circa 1051, included streets laid with ductwork in which wine flowed for all to share. Royals and the wealthy often provided free wine (and food) for the masses on their wedding days, sponsoring street parties and carnivals at which citizens toasted the health and future fertility of party sponsors.6
William the Conqueror, also known as William the Bastard, eventually became the king of England, despite never learning English and preferring life in Normandy. His ascent to the monarchy was clouded by his illegitimacy, which perhaps made him particularly eager to ply a suspicious public with spirits.
Linguist Dan Jurafsky writes that contemporary herb-infused liquors, ciders, and signature cocktails actually hale from a 9,000-year-old tradition of mixed drinks. Herb-infused wines and honeyed beers were made over 4,000 years ago. The wassails of the court of Henry VII and the spiced wine of the eighteenth century all derived from the ancient practice of distilling fermented drinks in order to increase alcohol content.7
Just as food was long considered medicinal, so was alcohol, and it was standard for midwives to prescribe spiced wine or rum for women in labor. One childbirth manual recommended sage ale every morning when a woman was first known to be pregnant to “strengthen the womb.”8
Historian Margaret Visser notes that at varying times in history, women have not been included in the drinking of toasts, and English etiquette mandated that should a woman be the subject of a toast, she was merely to smile in response. Men would raise a glass to the thought of an absent woman, drinking to the beautiful “toast of the town.” As etiquette rules got more rigorous in the late 1800s, it was deemed ungentlemanly to mention a woman in a toast at all, as toasting became regarded as unrefined.9
Remember gentlemen, it’s not just France we are fighting for, it’s champagne!
—Winston Churchill, 1918
Champagne is emblematic of celebrations of all kinds, and the pop of the cork is closely associated with weddings. Oxford University professor Charles Spence researched the relationship between sound and food and proved that the flavor is enhanced when a particular sound is heard during consumption. For example, bacon’s flavor is intensified if it is heard sizzling in the pan, and potato chips taste better if they make a crunchy sound when chewed.10
In order to be true champagne, the wine must come from the Champagne region in northern France and comprise certain grapes (Pinot noir, Pinot Meunier, or Chardonnay), and specific bottling and manufacturing processes add to the cost of producing it. Products not meeting these criteria are considered “sparkling wine.”
Champagne, like all commercial wine, is bottled in standard sizes. One bottle contains a little over twenty-five ounces (750 milliliters), equaling about five portions. It is also available in bigger sizes, which are used for special occasions. A Magnum is equivalent to two standard bottles, and the Jeroboam equals four. The biblical names continue on up to the Balthazar, which holds twelve bottles of bubbly. The Nebuchadnezzar (king of Babylon) holds the equivalent of a whopping twenty bottles and can fill one hundred glasses.11
As for chilling the bottles in readiness for weddings, sparkling wine bottles are thicker than traditional wine bottles, so they need to get on ice sooner than those holding flat wine. Cold helps preserve bubbles, so champagne is served as cold as possible. One glass has 100 million bubbles, according to a French physic professor who conducts “bubble research.”12
Speaking of bubbles, a glass with a smaller opening (not the stereotypical wide-rimmed coupe glass) lets bubbles escape. As for popping the cork, it should be released quietly. Caterers will perhaps sacrifice an inexpensive bottle for the “sound” of the pop and then have staff quietly open the bottles to be poured. Wine expert Karen MacNeil writes that more than one Frenchman has advised her that “a Champagne bottle, correctly opened, should make a sound no greater than that of a contented woman’s sigh. French men are French men after all.”13
Dom Pierre Pérignon, called the “father of sparkling wine,” was a Benedictine monk and cellar master of the Hautvillers Abbey in the Champagne district. Throughout his tenure, which began in 1668, he worked to find ways to keep wine from oxidizing, experimenting with glass containers in place of barrels and with corking methods.
In 1728, the French king Louis XV standardized wine bottle sizes (the imaginative naming of them came later), issuing an edict that allowed for the sale of individual bottles, which required corks. Prior to that, wines from Champagne had only been sold in barrels, which could be easily counted and therefore taxed. Workers who handled these new bottles, with stoppers held in place with twine, well knew the danger of exploding corks. One wine tradesmen reported in the nineteenth century that workers wore wire masks and that he knew of “a cellar in which there are three men who have each lost an eye.”14
Improved glass technology allowed France to ship champagne abroad, and the distinctive “pop” of the cork was met with amusement. It became especially popular in England and quickly became fashionable.
As early as 1881 the use of champagne at festive gatherings was “a charming fashion that is beginning to be more common.”15 Champagnes, such as “dry” and “extra dry,” were especially created to appeal to the tastes of specific markets, and producers made conscious efforts to position champagne as an item suitable for respectable women.16 Intentionally marketing their product as symbolic of leisure time, champagne sales-people associated the beverage with horse racing, boating, and hunting. The bridal business aggressively advertised it as ladylike and sophisticated.17 Luxury products, which entail paying a premium for something unnecessary, undoubtedly rely heavily on advertising and maintaining the notion that a particular product commands status. Here the champagne industry has excelled.
Champagne houses, in what researcher Kolleen M. Guy calls the “monk myth,” elevated the legend of the long-dead Dom Pérignon to market their wares. By the 1860s, industry pamphlets told the tale of Pérignon, now blind with heightened senses of smell and taste, which explained his supernatural wine-making abilities. This aggressive marketing campaign lent champagne a spiritual air, considering it had been “invented” by a sightless, toiling man of the cloth. In 1910, the Universal Exposition (the World’s Fair), held in Brussels, featured an “authentic reproduction” of the abbey in which he toiled, with wine barrels and presses said to have been used by the monk himself.18 Jay Z would be proud.
Manufacturers as early as the 1800s hired celebrities to endorse their products, and champagne bottles featured labels depicting any number of lords, earls, and viscounts, the stars of the time.19 As evidenced by the “cash for title” phenomenon, money was running out for the gentry in Europe, so one can imagine they were happy to get paid for sipping champagne. Modern celebrities, “famous for doing nothing,” are not a new invention. Like some contemporary socialites, titled aristocracy might become well known just for being born wealthy.
A recent report of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies noted that large American corporations devoted only 3.2 percent of advertising dollars to targeting Hispanics, as opposed to 13.5 percent for the general public. One major exception has been the firm of Veuve Clicquot, the world’s third best-selling champagne in America. In recent years, Veuve Clicquot has spent close to 6 percent of its annual budget targeting Hispanics.20
The champagne Veuve Clicquot is named for the widow Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, whose young husband died and left her to run the family winery. Riddling, the process for removing yeast particles that make sparkling wine cloudy, was perfected in her cellars in 1816.21 The ability to rid wine of murky sediment, combined with improved technology that allowed for the manufacture of clear, inexpensive glass (for use in both bottling and drinkware), gave rise to the model of effervescent wine we use for toasting today.
Clicquot was the first of a string of widows who took over some of the great champagne houses of France, with the list including such famous last names as Pommery, Olry-Roederer, and Bollinger. Odette Pol-Roger took on her duties after the death of her husband in 1956. Prior to this, she had worked with the French Resistance during World War II, running messages via twelve-hour bicycle rides to Paris.22 There must be something in the water in Champagne.
On January 16, 1920, the United States went dry. Passage of the Eighteenth Amendment was commemorated with mock funerals at bars and restaurants. In Appetite City, William Grimes writes that the Park Avenue Hotel draped tables and walls in black fabric, with “mourners” filing past a coffin filled with liquor bottles.23
Prohibition was hard on fine-dining restaurants in particular, as they counted on liquor sales to make a profit, and their recipes often depended on wine or spirits to prepare classic French cuisine. Chefs were forced either to cook creatively or to find a supply of alcohol, and waitstaff who had made a living in fine dining rooms preparing flambéed items like cherries jubilee or crêpes suzette lost their jobs.24 In his Prohibition-era cookbook, the chef of the Hotel St. Francis in San Francisco wrote, “The recipes in my book calling for wines and liqueurs for flavoring may be followed by those whose legitimate supplies are not yet used up.”25 This winking reference to inevitable alcohol use (it was not, after all, illegal to have alcohol—only to make, transport, or sell it) was typical. The Volstead Act, passed to clarify the amendment, allowed people to keep alcohol purchased prior to July 1, 1919, so imbibers had six months to do some earnest stockpiling! Surely many families stocked up for impending wedding celebrations. There is little reason to suppose that wedding parties were bereft of champagne toasts.
The Anti-Saloon League warned that women who drank were tempting misadventure and cautioned that alcohol inflamed female “sex impulses.” Alcohol use was tied to promiscuity, and it was considered women’s work to monitor societal morality. Nineteenth-century author Lydia Maria Child serves as an early prototype of the sturdy American woman whose frugality could shepherd a virtuous family through hard times. Child’s “hard-core” cooking employed nose-to-tail cookery long before it was fashionable. As one researcher noted when reviewing his subject’s cooking prowess, “Child put readers on notice that should the eyes drop out of a roasting pig, it was surely one-half done.”26 Child’s writings championed a healthy diet as a means to overall health and cemented the American ideal that a man would do well to procure a bride whose adroit cooking ensured the survival of his offspring.
Lydia Maria Child married for love, against the advice of her affluent parents, and embarked on a life that kept her on the fringes of poverty. The American Frugal Housewife indeed includes a chapter titled “How to Endure Poverty.” Her treatises on slavery, feminism, and the rights of Native Americans were high-minded; yet Child’s domestic advice did not exist in a vacuum. Her arguments for social reform did not reside in a realm wholly separate from the kitchen. Child’s body of work, encompassing poetry, recipes, medical advice, and political essays, reflected an American psyche that considered bodies and minds as a unit in need of discipline to retain order. The theme of restraint, applied to staid wedding feasts for so long, is rooted in this mentality. Author Frederick Kaufman ingeniously calls Child “a cross between Susan Sontag and Suzanne Somers, an intelligent writer who was a celebrity, a hostess, a diet-book writer, and a cultural critic.”27
By the mid-1920s, respect for the “noble experiment” had begun to erode, especially among the middle classes, who had tired of ubiquitous organized crime (empires built on bootlegging) and the violent raids conducted by the “dry” police.28 Instead of purifying the masses, temperance made contempt for the law an ordinary part of life. Drinking became “fun,” a forbidden fruit whose pursuit promised adventure for individuals who ordinarily never flouted the rules.29 Again, the call for restraint runs all through America’s relationship with food, and we see this pattern of restraint versus excess played out repeatedly in dining habits, particularly in wedding food traditions.
Brides who tipped back cocktails and danced in speakeasies had reason to embrace the freedoms offered by a new and more open American sensibility. Historian (and longtime editor of Harper’s Magazine) Frederick Allen Lewis attributed women’s newfound boldness to the scars of World War I, suggesting that women were merely infected with the same feelings of urgency for gratification that propelled war-weary men. Rushed weddings borne of eleventh-hour alliances, fueled by the danger of the battlefield, made for a population interested in embracing new and exhilarating experiences.30 The image of rabid women rampaging into taverns in a fury (à la Carrie Nation) has indeed been burned into the public consciousness, but they were not particularly effective. These women were a small, albeit vocal, faction of reformers, and females did not even have voting rights when the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified. Despite being cast as shrieking anti-alcohol pundits, prim, formidable ladies who decried the violent actions associated with temperance activism had founded organizations such as the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform.
Conflicts of race, gender, and class simmered in America, at odds with the ease and assumed sense of refinement for those ensconced in the dining rooms of luxury hotels. A national diet mania began in the 1920s; women wanted a slim figure for the fitted skirts of the flapper look. A desire for modernity promoted a rejection of “old-fashioned” farm food, and processed goods signaled that modernity. Regional food tastes continued to blur as fast trains carted processed items across the country. Manufacturers convinced citizens that store-bought items, prepared in sanitary workshops by modern professionals, were superior.31
Clever wine producers sold grape juice and blocks of dried grapes with labels that warned purchasers not to add water or yeast or the grapes would ferment and turn to wine. Some statistics show that wine consumption in the United States almost doubled by 1930.32 America kept right on drinking. Researcher Eric Burns writes that Americans who had not hoarded alcohol for either personal or commercial use began their adjustment to a dry country at 12:01 a.m. on the day the Volstead Act came into effect.33 The making of homemade alcohol was a family affair, with bathtubs all over the country filled with experimental batches of everything from beer to gin, wine, and any manner of moonshine.
Mother’s in the kitchen
Washing out the jugs;
Sisters in the pantry
Bottling the suds;
Father’s in the cellar
Mixing up the hops;
Johnny’s on the front porch
Watching for the cops.
—A popular folksong in the 1920s34
Alcohol was everywhere during Prohibition; yet only the privileged were able to get their hands on quality liquor. The bootlegging business was thriving, and unscrupulous suppliers poisoned more than a few unwitting customers. It is often said that Americans drank more during Prohibition, which is untrue. The context of drinking did change, however, and ironically the middle class became more exposed in the 1920s to alcohol, which became less associated with vagrants. Americans as a whole were indeed drinking less, but a forceful and educated youth culture romanticized a carefree lifestyle and eroded stereotypes that associated alcohol with tramps and dingy saloons. Two out of three college students drank during Prohibition,35 which thus had much to do with a new com-mingling of the sexes. The consumption of illegal alcohol fostered a sense of cohesion as rule-breaking hurried intimacy in public venues.
When passage of the Twenty-First Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, the glee expressed in the bridal industry was explosive. No call to hock alcohol went unanswered. Champagne producers Mumm and Moët & Chandon advertised relentlessly in bridal magazines, and the frequency of alcohol ads in these periodicals was astounding. An article on anniversaries advised the bride to reserve five boxes of cake servings and to eat one with her husband on their first, second, and third anniversaries. Then she should open the fourth box on her tenth anniversary, and the fifth box on her twenty-fifth anniversary. By then, the reader is told, “the cake is pretty hard and tastes, alas, a bit queer,” but a “tiny morsel washed down by some good wine, supplied by the now prosperous bridegroom,” could take care of that problem.36 Saving wedding cake to symbolically eat later was not at all unusual, as evidenced by the popular Smiley’s Cook Book and Universal Household Guide, which in 1901 noted that its wedding cake “would last for years.”37
Less than a year after repeal, Julian Street wrote that it was ideal for newlyweds to have a rich uncle who could build their wine cellar for them as a wedding gift, but, in any case, the groom was told, “The cellar must be founded.” Street lamented that there were “few fine old cellars left” and tasked readers with the “establishment of young and hopeful cellars.”38 Wine dealer Bellows and Company also felt uncles were responsible for outfitting bars; its 1935 advertisement read, “To Worried Uncles: We suggest a well-rounded wine cellar as a most appropriate wedding gift.” (A ten-case assortment is next suggested for $250.)39
The Disney organization is heavily invested in the bridal industry, and in 2010 Florida’s Disney World was home to more than 1,500 weddings per year (some sources report significantly more; there are numerous venues at the Florida location alone, including cruises and off-site events, not to mention Disney’s California, Hawaii, and international locations). For toasting, Disney bottles its own Fairy Tale Cuvée. Mickey or Minnie Mouse can be booked to attend your celebration, but they cannot stay for the toast, as Disney characters are forbidden to be on site while alcohol is being consumed.40 Disney characters must also “correspond” with one another so as to not ruin the fantasy (for instance, Buzz Lightyear should not mingle with Pocahontas). There is a cottage industry of books and websites dedicated to all things Disney, even some dedicated, amusingly, specifically to drinking at Disney resorts. Disney works hard to promote its ideal of clean living, which somehow lends itself to attempts to do otherwise. The Drinking at Disney website offers a “slightly blurry view of the mouse” and has a section on “stealth drinking” that any adventurous honeymooning couple will appreciate.41
Drinking a particular beverage or from a certain vessel is a nuptial ritual common to many cultures, with the Christian rite of consuming symbolic bread and wine at a Mass as only one example. Pueblo wedding vases have two handles, with double spouts that join at the top, meant to represent the union of the new couple. The vases sold on the Internet and in gift shops in the Southwest are generally decorative, as authentic wedding vases are only given within the Native American tribal community. The vase is filled with holy water and drunk from during the wedding ceremony. Similarly, the French “coupe de marriage” is a two-handled cup, often handed down within families, out of which a bride and groom drink to one another at their service.
Slavic weddings may include a tray loaded with glasses of water and wine, into which guests drop coins, with the bride keeping the money left in the wine and the groomsmen getting the coins dropped in the water.42 In Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbian countries, bridal parties are toasted with a fruit brandy called rakia, often made from fermented plum juice.43
Japanese ceremonies use three sake cups, with the bride and groom each taking three sips from the three cups, followed by their parents, who do the same. Koreans sip wine out of a gourd traditionally grown by the bride’s mother, and libation ceremonies, in which schnapps is poured on the ground during prayers for departed relatives, are particularly popular with Nigerian Americans.
Wedding-specific websites (such as TheKnot.com) are full of other examples, and it can be assumed that every region and religion has its own toasting traditions. Cultures that eschew alcohol have equally as many traditions, often using blessed water. Holy water was sprinkled all over the linens of English royals in the Middle Ages as part of the “bedding” ceremony. Female guests escorted the bride to bed after sprucing her up and undressing her, and male guests did the same for the groom. After leaving the couple alone for a while, the guests returned with wine and food, seemingly to shore up the couple after their first encounter.44
Classic thirst quenchers like iced tea and lemonade have made a comeback, and it is common now to rework them into the signature cocktails served at wedding receptions. A 2016 poll reveals that over 38 percent of newlyweds felt serving a “welcome” drink upon entry to the reception was worth an increase in wedding budget, and over 36 percent wanted a specific drink (not just house champagne) served for the formal toast.45 Rosé wine is making a comeback on cocktail menus, and many hosts are offering craft beers, hard ciders, and mead (honey wine) as alternatives to the staple red and white wines.
Wedding planners may encourage couples to serve cocktails based on their personal story (a Hurricane for the couple who went to college in New Orleans) or ethnic drinks as a salute to a past family homeland (grappa for Italy, ouzo for Greece, tequila for Mexico, and so forth). These drinks may be “upsold,” of course, to include premium brands and feature the flair of edible flowers or custom flavored ice cubes to make them wedding worthy. Special glassware is also a trend, with the copper cups of the Moscow Mule, a vodka drink made with ginger beer and lime, leading the charge. “Flights” of various brands of scotch or whisky are also popular. Drinks like this are another reason for the popularity of the carbohydrate heavy, hangover-battling snack food served at the after-party.
The consumption of alcohol in America is an especially interesting topic, especially as alcohol use originated prior to the establishment of Europeans in the New World.
Alcohol serves an important economic function, as its production and use employ many people, and its sale is a source of income for many institutions. In contemporary culture, as in the past, the purchase of luxury products indicates status, and buying certain brands of wine or food evinces purchasing power.46 Sparkling wine has a particular cachet because, unlike wine and beer, which are sold in large vessels and kegs, it is sold only in individual bottles and not generally in volume.47
One never ever drinks oneself, but babies being toasted at their christenings are among the few people to know this.
—Judith Martin, Miss Manners’ Guide to
Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, 198248
Speeches by the best man and maid of honor inevitably occur at the wedding reception, and if these speeches are long-winded, guests hope to have a full glass of alcohol. At his 2014 wedding to Kim Kardashian, Kanye West disposed of the need for a best man and gave a forty-five-minute toast to himself.
Cultures have historically assigned men and women different relationships to drinking. Alcohol has served as a vehicle for a type of push-me, pull-me relationship that glamorizes drinking, yet also insinuates that women should maintain a reserve not demanded of men. Wedding ceremonies and receptions, however, are places where alcohol use is infused with meaning, glamorized, and used to signify the importance of the occasion.