The high sucrose content of sugarcane makes it an ideal source for the production of alcoholic beverages. Ancient Sanskrit texts refer to fermented varieties of sugarcane wine in India.
In AD 800, sugarcane cultivation spread from Persia to Egypt, Syria and as far as Morocco and Spain.
Sugarcane wine was probably also produced in parts of the Arab world during the Mediterranean phase in sugar production.
Sir Thomas Herbert, traveler in Persia from 1627 to 1629 wrote, ‘Their liquor is sometimes fair water, sugar, rose water and juice of lemons mixed, and sugar confected with citrons, violets or other sweet flowers and for more delicacy, sometimes a mixture of amber, this we call sherbet’.
Throughout Europe, demand for sugar accompanied home and café consumption of cocoa, coffee and tea. By 1573, the first German refinery at Augsburg was producing cane sugar for local shop.
Sugar became popular in tea in Britain by the end of the seventeenth century. Sugar was in the vanguard of the ‘hot drinks revolution’ of the eighteenth century.
It was also only during the course of the nineteenth century that it was discovered that yeast coverts sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide in the process known as fermentation.
Sugar in drinks during ancient times