Forgotten Drink

Drink history calendar

A year of drink history

Updated

60 dates in the history of drink, from feast days to famous dinners, and what people drank on each. Where we have the period recipe or the full story, the drink links to it. Feasts that move each year show their next date.

January

  1. Samuel Pepys begins his diaryAle, wine and the taverns of Restoration London
  2. Twelfth Night, the last night of ChristmasThe wassail bowl goes round one last time
  3. Blanchard’s balloon rises over Philadelphia, the first flight in AmericaA glass of wine before take-off, and a bottle to share on landing
  4. Boston’s Great Molasses FloodMolasses, rum and industrial alcohol
  5. US Prohibition takes effectSoda fountains, near beer and home punch bowls
  6. Gold is found at Sutter’s Mill in CaliforniaWhiskey and the gold-rush saloon
  7. Burns Night, Robert Burns’s birthdayWhisky toasts and a hot toddy
  8. The Rum Rebellion topples Governor Bligh in SydneyRum, the colony’s money in all but name

February

  2. Shrove Tuesday, Pancake DayPancakes and the last good ale before Lent
  3. Queen Victoria marries Prince AlbertA royal wedding breakfast at Buckingham Palace
  4. The St Valentine’s Day Massacre in a Chicago bootleggers’ garageProhibition whisky and the gangs who ran it
  5. Congress sends the repeal of Prohibition to the statesThe end of the dry years begins
  6. Abraham Lincoln’s Temperance Address in SpringfieldThe Washingtonians and their cold-water pledge

March

  1. St David’s Day, Wales’s national dayWelsh metheglin, the spiced mead
  2. Andrew Jackson’s inauguration party at the White HouseTubs of punch carried out to the lawn to clear the house
  3. Mothering SundayA day home for mother, with cake and tea
  4. The Ides of March: Julius Caesar is killedWine in Caesar’s Rome
  5. St Patrick’s DayIrish whiskey and the punch bowl
  6. Roosevelt signs the law that brings back 3.2% beer”A good time for a beer”

April

  2. Legal beer goes on sale again in the USThe first beer since 1920
  4. Parilia, the festival of Rome’s foundingMilk mixed with purple must, drunk before leaping the fire
  5. Shakespeare dies, on St George’s DaySack, ale and the taverns of his plays

May

  1. The Great Exhibition opens in LondonVictorian soda water and lemonade
  2. Coca-Cola is first sold, in an Atlanta pharmacyThe soda fountain and its tonics
  3. A Hudson, New York, paper prints an early definition of “cocktail”Spirits, sugar, water and bitters
  4. A coffee row at a Pan American dinner in New YorkCoffee, sherry and Champagne at the Waldorf Astoria

June

  1. Magna Carta is sealed at RunnymedeOne measure of wine and ale for the whole kingdom
  3. The Townshend Act puts a duty on tea in the American coloniesThe tax that led to the Boston Tea Party

July

  1. Wartime Prohibition starts in the US, the “Thirsty First”Last orders before the dry years
  2. The Declaration of Independence is adoptedPunch in the colonies, and Franklin’s milk punch
  3. Black Tot Day, the Royal Navy’s last daily rum rationNavy rum and grog

August

  1. Lammas, the old festival of the first wheat harvestHarvest-field drinks such as switchel
  2. Edward VII is crownedWhat the Edwardians drank
  3. Vinalia Rustica, the Roman festival that opened the grape harvestWhat Roman wine tasted like

September

  1. The Mayflower sails from PlymouthBeer in the hold for the crossing
  2. Philadelphia’s City Light Horse entertains George Washington at the City TavernFifty-four bottles of Madeira on one bill
  3. Samuel Pepys drinks his first “cup of tee”Tea, coffee and chocolate reach England

October

  1. Benjamin Franklin sends his milk punch recipe to James BowdoinClarified milk punch
  2. A Munich royal wedding starts the first OktoberfestHistoric beer styles
  3. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Wilson’s vetoThe law that defined “intoxicating liquor” at 0.5%
  4. All Hallows’ Eve, or HalloweenApples by the fire, and a hot spiced apple drink

November

  1. The Gunpowder Plot is foiled, the start of Bonfire NightSomething hot for a cold night by the fire
  3. The Pilgrims’ first drink of New England water, at Cape CodFrom ship’s beer to spring water
  5. Shackleton’s Endurance sinks in the Weddell SeaTea and cocoa for polar parties on the ice
  7. St Andrew’s Day, Scotland’s national dayScotch whisky and the toddy

December

  1. Repeal of ProhibitionThe first legal drinks of 1933
  2. The first Nobel Prize dinner, in StockholmHock, claret, champagne and sherry at the banquet
  3. Amundsen’s party reaches the South PoleSnow melted over a Primus stove for the polar march
  4. The Boston Tea PartyTea, coffee and colonial boycotts
  5. Saturnalia begins in RomeRoman winter drinking
  6. Dickens publishes A Christmas CarolSmoking Bishop, Scrooge’s Christmas drink
  7. The Christmas Truce on the Western FrontRum, beer and wine passed across no man’s land
  8. Hogmanay, Scotland’s New Year’s EveA het pint and a dram for the first-foot

How to cite this page

Forgotten Drink, “A Year of Drink History,” https://forgottendrink.com/drinks-calendar/, updated November 4, 2026. The sources for each date are on the recipe or story it links to; how we research explains how we check them.