Rum, beer, whiskey and wine have flowed through American history from colonial trade and encounters with Native Americans to contemporary issues as diverse as health, criminality and connoisseurship. Cocktail parties, champagne dinners, smoky bars and the combination of sports, television and beer are all familiar contemporary American images in Hollywood or everyday conversation. Uses, meanings and marketing of these various forms of alcohol, moreover, have been strongly associated with the social construction of gender (especially masculinity), class, race, ethnicity morality and even regional identity or urbanity. Yet, despite the complexities of “The Alcoholic Republic,” the US has also witnessed strong sentiments for the control of alcohol consumption, based on religious and moral arguments. These sentiments have created bans at the local level and also led to the Constitution’s 18th Amendment (1919)—Prohibition—which made the ban national (and also reified anti-German sentiment in the aftermath of the First World War). Controls on drinking for those under twenty-one, taxes on alcohol and limits on alcohol sales still remain features of national interests in American spirits.

The end of Prohibition with the 11th Amendment (1933) proved a watershed in American attitudes towards alcohol, if only in the collapse of any consensus or overall control. In fact, taxes on newly legalized spirits provided needed revenues in the Depression, while new jobs and production rapidly re-established liquor as part of American life, eclipsing ongoing temperance campaigns. Nonetheless, roughly 30 percent of Americans choose not to drink.

Who drinks what, where and to what extent has also varied throughout American history. Rum gained early prominence in the triangle trade, linking the colonies with the Caribbean and African slavery. Whiskeys of various sorts accompanied westward expansion, while Bourbon (from Kentucky) and the mint julep became emblematic of the South. Imported wines, liquors and liqueurs have been marketed as badges of sophistication, while most beers became “workingman’s drinks” via local production and taverns.

While many local beer producers have disappeared, names of larger conglomerates— Anheuser-Busch, Coors, Pabst, Schlitz—memorialize the impact of Central European producers (even if American beer often seems a pale derivative of more robust, flavorful European varieties). Despite new premium brands and micro-breweries, beer faded as the country’s most popular drink in the twentieth century in favor of distilled spirits.

Although the Founding Fathers brought in casks of Madeira and American grape stocks, which saved European production after phylloxera devastated vineyards in Europe, wine generally has been a secondary product in the US, associated with immigrants and Mediterranean climates like California. Other states, apart from the West Coast centers, now produce quality wines based on American grapes (and more idiosyncratic varietals based on local produce like oranges). American wine production and consumption have soared in the early twenty-first century, moving from ethnic niches to cosmopolitan middle-class tables, although the US still ranks in the second tier of wine consumption globally.

Historically, Irish and British Americans, Italian Americans and Latino/Caribbean Americans have been identified as heavy consumers of alcohol, although ethnic associations have decreased over time (stereotypes continue, however). Religion, too, plays a factor since many fundamentalist Protestant groups (as well as Mormons) ban alcohol, while Catholics and Jews prove more tolerant. This also extends to ceremonies.

During Prohibition, wine for the Catholic Eucharist was a special category; in Protestant communions, however, one may find grape juice substituted for wine.

Alcohol is viewed as a special danger for vulnerable, innocent youth, leading to legal penalties for providing liquor to them. Nonetheless, the temptations of drinking are part of teenage culture at schools and in social life. Various sweeter, fruitier and lighter combinations—wine coolers, flavored wines, blush wines—even cater to younger drinkers (or appeal to perceptions of a feminine market).

Imagery and marketing complicate any analysis of consumption or establishment of a clear culture of consumption. African American neighborhood organizers, for example, complain of bill-boards and advertisements targeting young blacks with the glamour of cigarettes and specialized niche brands of malt liquor. Liquor stores, especially if owned by immigrant entrepreneurs, have become flashpoints of urban confrontation. Native Americans, too, have faced long and eviscerating struggles with alcoholism and related inherited conditions (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) that mark the continuing impact of alcohol as a weapon settlers used to undermine the tribes. In these cases, and others across class and gender lines, while drinking itself may not be seen as a problem—and, indeed, may be seen as a part of conviviality and sophistication—loss of control is treated as a shameful condition. This affirms a general moral identification of alcohol with evil.

Media, sermons and other discourses may translate this judgment into images of adolescents open to risky sexual behavior, decaying winos (generally shown as male), abusive fathers or quiet, despairing housewives drinking behind closed doors. These negative portraits are the stuff of Hollywood depictions of excessive use from, for example, the Lost Weekend (1945) or Days of Wine and Roses (1962) to Barfly (1987) and Leaving Las Vegas (1995). Nonetheless, Hollywood has shown its own American schizophrenia as these searing portraits meet other images of sophistication or the sociability of bars and celebration. Television, where advertising is limited to beer and wine, has worked with the government to censor messages about alcohol and drugs (especially in teen-directed shows). Yet, as in cigarette propaganda, condemnation is undercut by talking frogs (Budweiser), sparkling images of wine and chit-chat, and offscreen intertexts of stars and parties. Celebrities checking into the Betty Ford clinic to “dry out” compete with images of good times, reinforcing America’s conflicting attitudes.

Alcoholism in the United States is associated not only with health risks, but also with abusive behaviors and accidents, especially when alcohol and automobiles mix. This has spawned home-grown approaches to combating alcohol, like the self-help program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and other grassroots groups, meanwhile, have fought for more severe punishment of drunk drivers. These campaigns have become complicated by both the general acceptance of the presence of alcohol and debates over alcoholism as a disease or disability.

Outsiders in the US may be bewildered by the variety of controls on beverage sales.

Grocery stores in Florida and California sell wine and beer, but in Pennsylvania one must go to separate state-licensed distributors. Other states provide patchworks of “wet” and “dry” counties, where the nearest distributor may be miles away. Many liquor stores, moreover, are closed on Sunday, and some states control alcohol sales in times that might be associated with church-going, late at night or on election days. Licenses for the sale of alcohol in public establishments also vary; restaurants without licenses may allow a BYOB (“bring your own bottle”) accompaniment. In all, these rules embody the uneasy attitudes of morality respectability, health and taste that American society embraces when the cork is pulled.