Before there was a country, there was a barroom. That is the cheerful premise behind a surge of interest this summer in the drinks of Revolutionary Boston — the punches, flips and fortified wines poured in the taverns where independence was, in part, plotted.
The tavern as headquarters
Colonial Bostonians drank heavily by modern standards, partly because weak "small beer" and cider were safer than the water. But taverns were also the town halls of their day. The Green Dragon Tavern, near what is now Union Street, has been called a "headquarters of the Revolution": its rooms hosted the Sons of Liberty and figures such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, and intelligence gathered there about British troop movements helped set Revere's midnight ride in motion, GBH News reported. The original building is long gone; a modern namesake operates near the Freedom Trail today.
What was in the glass
The drinks were social by design. Rum punch came in large communal bowls, ladled among guests. Flip was a warming mix of ale, rum and sweetener, frothed by plunging a fire-heated iron into the mug. And fortified Madeira was, in effect, the wine of the founding class. Chronicling that world is the historian Brooke Barbier, who runs Revolutionary-era tavern tours of Boston and whose recent book, "Cocked and Boozy," argues drink was woven through the Revolution — each chapter closing with an 18th-century recipe adapted for today, the Journal of the American Revolution noted.
Marking 250 years
The timing is no accident. Boston is deep into commemorations for the nation's 250th anniversary, and its Independence Day program includes a parade and a reading of the Declaration of Independence from the Old State House balcony — where the crowd is invited to boo at each mention of the king, the city says. For the history-minded, the appeal is less the drinking than the context: a reminder that the Revolution was thrashed out in loud, crowded rooms, and that some of its boldest ideas were, quite literally, hatched over a drink. Cheers — responsibly.
