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?