When I was a little girl I used to do a simple game at table with my sister: competing on best color of our water.
I know that pediatricians, pedagogues and parents will be terrified to these words: I used to drink wine since I was very little, maybe 5 or 6 years old. Not really WINE WINE. But my mom used to pour one or two drops of wine in our glasses full of water. that is why my sister and I were competing on color.
This is the Italian habit at table: having wine. Not a bottle. Just a glass. This is still happening also nowadays: restaurants serve wine by the glass.
I have so been used to wine as for me it has never been a will to go out just for drinking. For my generation, with the exception of some cases, the people would not go out just for drinking and getting drunk. Wine was something common, not forbidden, it was and it is part of our daily meal. Thus going out meant to go to the moovie, go to dance, go to the restaurant, go for a trip, go to someone’s house, go to play, go everywhere else but not just going out for getting drunk and sick.
To be fair, I don’t remember I ever got drunk in my life, except the only time my boy friend played me a not nice joke at the beginning of our relationship about 50 years ago. I was sixteen and very sensitive to alcohol. Still I am. I never drink – clients, students and friends who come to my school know that I don’t – , if not a single glass of wine when I am with my family and friends at table.
More often than a glass of pure wine, it might happen to me I color my water with a few drops of wine at table. As a friend of mine says, nothing quenches thirst better than a glass of water with a finger of wine when it is very hot. As I like to say, nothing cleans your mouth after the meal, better than a sip of watery wine.
To tell the truth, also the ancient Romans added water to their wine, and ice cubes too: they knew a system to carry snow from the mountains and keep it in caves under ground.
Thus, the Strong Water is nothing new on the Italian Table.