If you go more than 10 minutes in any direction from my house, you’ll be surrounded by endless fields of grain. It’s not as all-wheat as it once was, not by a longshot, but you could still say that I live in the “breadbasket of the Empire” — so long as by “bread” you mean “canola oil.”
I never really connected the legendary Canadian thirst for beer with my grain surroundings until I saw this map, over at StrangeMaps.
In red is the areas of Europe that are traditional wine drinkers. In brown, the traditional beer drinkers. And in blue are the vodka countries. Of course, there is much individual variation, but you can note that it by and large matches up with both the places were grapes grow and the spread of the Roman Empire.
As Strange Maps notes:
Either through effects of climate change or renewed viticultural enthusiasm, grapes and wine-making have in recent years been introduced in areas to the north of the traditional Wine Belt, in southern Britain and the Low Countries, creating an overlap between Wine and Beer Belts. That overlap is often ancient rather than recent; the introduction not rarely is a reintroduction. And indeed, southwestern Germany, for example, has an ancient and unbroken tradition of wine-making.
Mmm, now I’m thirsty.
Grant Hamilton
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