Mac Marshall stated on 7th October that  "There is a large and consistent 
record in the contact literature that makes clear that anything most of us
would recognize as and call an alcoholic beverage was absent in Native
North America," apart from one small area in the South West. What confuses
me, however, is that the contact literature states quite clearly that
Eastern Indians drank grape juice.  Adriaen van der Donck, a Dutchman who 
emigrated to what is now Albany in 1642, recorded that the Indians drank
grape juice but  "never make wine or beer". But I simply do not understand
how these and other Indian tribes could have drunk grape juice, without
having also drunk wine. It is not possible to prevent grape juice from
fermenting without recourse to chemicals such as sulphur or modern
technology (chilling, filtration, pasteurisation). If the Indians had grape
juice, then they must  
surely have had wine, whether intentionally or not. And then there is the 
comment in Hakluyt's Voyages from Arthur Barlowe, captain of one of the
first two ships sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584, who wrote of the
Algonquians (I think) in what is now North Carolina that "Their drink is
commonly water, but while the grape lasteth they drink wine." Surely "wine"
means wine (whatever those temperance campaigners who sought to rewrite the
Bible last century might have tried to claim). Or am I missing something
here?