Wine was an alcoholic beverage or drink made from fermented fruit. Yeast consumed the sugar in the fruit and converted them into alcohol. Wine was most often made from grapes, and the term "wine" generally refers to grape wine when used without any qualification, and even so, it can be made from a variety of fruit crops, including plum and cherry. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts were major factors in different styles of wine, including Beaujolais, Chablis, Claret‎, Madeira‎, Rosé‎, and Sherry‎. Port wine, or simply port, was a fortified wine produced in northern Portugal, typically a sweet red wine, often served with dessert, although it also comes in dry, semi-dry, and white varieties.

History[]

Throughout history, by the Age of Piracy, wine has been consumed for its intoxicating effects. At one point in time, when Jack Sparrow was a nine-year-old boy, his father, Captain Edward Teague, was visited by the French pirate Capitaine Chevalle. While the two old pirates were feasting on wine and duck and sweetmeats, Jack secretly stole Chevalle's gold-topped walking stick. When the theft was discovered Chevalle furiously accused his host of stealing the stick, and a swashbuckling battle ensued, which Jack watched from the rafters, grinning and twirling the stick between his hands. At the height of the battle, just when the two men had their swords at each other's throats, the boy dropped the stick precisely so it struck both their heads at once, knocking them out instantly, and then ate all the delicacies at the table. The next day, both pirates assumed they had hallucinated the theft under the influence of the wine.^[1]

When rogue pirate attacks on ships threatened the safety of piracy, some of the Pirate Lords of the Brethren Court assembled in Shipwreck City to discuss the best course of action in an informal meeting convened by Captain Edward Teague, among other associates. As Jack Sparrow entered the meeting room, the Spanish Pirate Lord Eduardo Villanueva laughed and saluted Jack while on his second or third goblet of wine. Former crewmen, too old for shipboard service, began carrying in trays of food and more goblets of wine, bustling back and forth as the conversation among the assembled Pirate Lords turned to more general, less confidential subjects, as well as the arrival of Captain Hector Barbossa.^[2]

After Jack Sparrow was reunited with his lady friend Esmeralda, the two young pirate scions would often pack up food and a few bottles of Don Rafael's wine, and row a small dory to several secluded coves around Shipwreck Cove. There they swam, dived into the water, fenced on the beach, shared their lunches, and sipped good wine.^[3]

By the time Jack Sparrow was an honest merchant seaman as a first mate for the East India Trading Company, Captain Nathaniel Bainbridge of the EITC brig Fair Wind was fond of wine, and often carried a leather flask with him.^[2] However, his taste for alcohol caused him to act irrationally when the ship was attacked by a pirate frigate, the Venganza, and he died of an apoplexy during a duel with the pirate captain Lady Esmeralda.^[2] Some time earlier, the Venganza took a Dutch brig loaded with Madeira, and although the buccaneers drank most of it, Esmeralda saved the best for herself, which was served to her and Jack Sparrow in her cabin the night after the taking of the Fair Wind.^[4]

A few months later, when Jack Sparrow was promoted to the rank of Captain and given command of the merchant vessel Wicked Wench by Cutler Beckett, the EITC's Director of West African Imports and Exports, the two men sealed their bargain with a glass of claret.^[5] Sparrow was later invited to a lunch with Beckett and his superior, Lord Reginald Marmaduke Bracegirdle-Penwallow, where the maids and footmen served them several different types of wine, but Sparrow drank only one glass of each because he wanted to keep a clear head.^[6] After agreeing to organize a search for the mythical island of Kerma and its ancient treasure, Sparrow and Beckett toasted their lucrative partnership with a particularly fine port.^[7]

During the search for Kerma, Jack sailed the Wicked Wench for the island of New Avalon in the Bahamas to find Prince Shabako, the long lost brother of his passenger, the Kerman princess Amenirdis. After the successful liberation of Shabako from slavery, Jack and his friends had a party in his cabin, drinking two bottles of good wine.^[8] Following the destruction of the rogue pirate sloop Koldunya, Jack and his First Mate Robert Greene were invited to a dinner with Lady Esmeralda, where they drank a good Spanish rosé.^[9]

Blackbeard's first Jolly Roger flag had a great horned skeleton holding a goblet of wine in one hand and a spear in the other,^[10] as if he's toasting his victims.^[11] Some time after his legendary death in a famous battle, Blackbeard replaced his pirate flag with a flaming skull, while the horned skeleton holding a goblet of wine was used in the design of the figurehead for the Queen Anne's Revenge.^[11][12]

Although Jack Sparrow had become an expert buccaneer, marksmanship took him a little longer to master,^[13][14] at some point after the merchant vessel Wicked Wench became the pirate ship Black Pearl.^[15] He trained himself to shoot by taking aim at empty wine bottles tossed from the Pearl's deck rail. A bucket of shot and a sack of gunpowder later, he could hit nine out of ten bottles.^[13][14]

During the desperate search for a way to end the Aztec curse with the blood from the child of William "Bootstrap Bill" Turner, Captain Hector Barbossa had wine aboard the Black Pearl, even though the curse prevented his crew from enjoying it. It was kept from an opened case beside the cabin door.^[16] When Barbossa's crew attacked Port Royal, some of the pirates invaded the governor's mansion where one of the intruders quickly downed a decades-old bottle of French wine like it was sugar water.^[17] As a table of food and drink was set for Elizabeth Swann, a young woman who introduced herself as a maid by the name "Elizabeth Turner" to Barbossa, the captain offered the maid wine. He poured a glass for his guest and then watched as she gulped it down. As "Miss Turner" was revealed the ghost story of the pirates' curse as immortal and undead skeletons, Barbossa took a bottle of wine, uncorked it with his teeth, raised it, tilted it, and drank straight from the bottle, the wine running over his jaw, gushing out from between the skeletal captain's empty rib cage, drenching his clothes.^[18]

Following the takeover of Port Royal by the East India Trading Company over one year later, the imprisoned Will Turner was brought before Lord Cutler Beckett, who poured two glasses of wine, but when Beckett offered one to Will, the young man refused to take it.^[19] A few months later, during the quest to rescue Captain Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones' Locker, Jack hallucinated two Jacks on his shoulders talking about sailing the seas for eternity aboard the Flying Dutchman, and Jack's response, mistaking making port with port wine, "I prefer rum. Rum's good."^[20] After the escape from the HMS Endeavour, Elizabeth Swann was brought to the Chinese Pirate Lord Sao Feng's cabin aboard his flagship, the Empress, where she was bathed and dressed in Chinese clothes by Feng's handmaidens. When Feng entered the cabin, he offered Elizabeth a glass of wine, which she accepted.^[21][22]

Years later, in The Captain's Daughter in London, Jack Sparrow and Angelica sliced and stabbed barrels that sprayed ale as a diversion against the Royal Guards, though Sparrow poked a hole in one barrel in which wine gushed out. Jack gulped the wine hungrily, taking a quick drink, only for Angelica to push him away. Later, during the voyage aboard Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, Jack and Angelica shared a bottle of wine, with music and candlelight, before engaging in a dance of deception.^[12] Prior to the battle between the Queen Anne's Revenge crew and the mermaids at Whitecap Bay, Derrick claimed to have spilled a glass of wine on deck the day they first set sail, which was considered good luck.^[10]

Behind the scenes[]

Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean attraction depicted a drink pouring down a skeletal gullet. This popular gag would go on to become an equally magical moment in the 2003 feature film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Wine first appeared in Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean in 1967, through the "Crew's Quarters" scene in Dead Man's Cove depicting a bottle that never ran dry as a drink poured down a dead skeletal pirate crewmen's gullet.^[23] However, in Jason Surrell's book Pirates of the Caribbean: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies, the scene was described to be the ruins of a dockside tavern filled with every whiskey, rum, and grog known to piratedom, with rum (rather than wine) being the drink flowing down the one pirate's gullet.^[24] This popular gag depicting a drink pouring down a skeletal gullet would go on to become an equally magical moment with the skeletal Captain Hector Barbossa in the 2003 feature film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, with the character drinking wine first adapted and with the drink identified in the film's junior novelization.^[16][18] The name "port" (as in port wine) was first named in the 2007 sequel At World's End.^[20]

In Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio's screenplay of The Curse of the Black Pearl, after Captain Barbossa revealed the ghost story of their curse, he takes a bottle of wine from the opened case beside the cabin door. Prior to the battle at Isla de Muerta, four pirates gathered wine bottles and rum casks into a pile, along all the food on the ship, acting out a mock-feast in anticipation of the curse being lifted. As a "Skinny" skeleton offered two bottles of rum or wine to a Big-Bones skeleton, the latter requested a "spot o' rum" from the former. Wine was misspelled as at least once as "whine" in at least one version of the screenplay available on the website Wordplay.^[25] While Barbossa taking the wine bottle from an open case was retained in the 2003 junior novelization,^[16] he was shown to already have the bottle in the final cut of the film.^[18]

In Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio's screenplay of On Stranger Tides, Jack Sparrow and Angelica cause a diversion by having ale spray out. Jack stabs one of the barrels, sending more ale gushing before he takes a quick drink.^[26] However, in the final cut of the film, Sparrow drinks wine.^[12] In addition, at Whitecap Bay, Derrick claimed to have spilled a glass of wine on deck, considered good luck. The line never made it into the final cut, but was retained in the film's junior novelization.^[10]

Appearances[]

• Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean (First appearance)
• Pirates of the Caribbean (2003 video game)
• The Price of Freedom
• Legends of the Brethren Court: Day of the Shadow (Mentioned only)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003 junior novelization) (First identified as wine)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2006 junior novelization)
  • Fluch der Karibik
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (First identified as port)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (junior novelization)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Penguin Readers)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (junior novelization) (Mentioned only)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Sources[]

• Disneyland: From the Pirates of the Caribbean to the World of Tomorrow
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Visual Guide
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide
• The Art of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

External links[]

• Wine on Wikipedia

Notes and references[]