Beer
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Planting the beer ingredients, barley and wheat, the nomad people started to create roots and became sedentary, forming the first cities.
Before that, people changed from place to place, living mostly on hunting, but the planting activity forced them to stay in one place, and that's how the first villages were formed. To count the planted grains, those villagers developed the first rudimentary forms of writing.
Wine
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Wine leveraged Greece's business. Once the Greek realized that wine made much more money than beer, they replaced the beer grains plantations for wine's grapes and olives. That action turned Greece into powerful exporting civilization. Along with the wine, the Greek exported their culture and they know-how about politics and society organization.
Distilled
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Distilled beverages are the ones that contain ethanol produced by the distillation of fermented grains, vegetables or fruits. To a beverage to be considered distilled, it must have at least 35% of alcohol by volume. Examples of distilled beverages are vodka, whisky and Brazilian Cachaça.
During the XVIII century, England tried to force its colonies to sell the distilled production only to the metropolis. That rule made Americans very unhappy and trigerred the Independence War.
Tea
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Tea raised and destroyed the English Empire. During the XIX century, the English owned the tea marked in China. The Chinese, after realizing the power of the tea comecialization, started a war against England, what destroyed a large portion of China. Once the Chinese Business was ruined, the English lost its most profitable market and business. England was never the same again.
Coffee
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Coffee changed the way people gathered. Before that, everyone socialized in bars and pubs, drinking to the point of shameful drunkeness. With the coffee and coffee shops, a new way of socializing was discovered. Intelecutals and brilliant thinking minds gathered around coffee tables and discussed their ideas.
A good example was when the Cientists Hook, Wren and Harley, during a meeting at a Café in London, got the idea and published Newton's “Principia”, a book about the gravity theory.
Drinks changed and still change history. Those five are mere examples, but what do you think that Coca-Cola is doing out there?
