From Soma to sake, we indulge in the eternal drinks that have fuelled gods, myths, and perhaps even us.
A voyage through the sacred drinks of myth and ritual, from vanished nectars to sips that still promise transcendence.
Ever since humankind began to gaze at the skies, projecting fears and desires into the heavens, it has assumed that the gods drink. It is unthinkable that they simply sit with their arms folded, watching the universe pass by. No. They must surely raise a glass. And since every earthly rite requires its libation, we invite you on a tour of divine tipples: vanished brews, ritual offerings, and intoxications once believed to bestow eternity.
Soma: the nectar sung before it was drunk
In the Vedic texts, Soma is no ordinary potion. It is a near-living entity, prepared through complex rites and then patiently filtered. First, it was offered to the gods, and only then to mortals. Its recipe has been lost, but its power lingers: to awaken, to purify, to bind the body to the cosmos.
Indra drank it for strength before battle. Agni, the divine fire, absorbed its brilliance. Those who shared in Soma sought heightened intelligence, or the clarity that sharpens prayer and creation. In the Rig Veda, one refrain echoes like a mantra: ‘We have drunk Soma; we have become immortal’.
Wine: Dionysus’ blood, Christ’s gift
Dionysus and Bacchus are often confused. Dionysus, the Greek god, embodies ecstasy and excess. Bacchus, his Roman counterpart, inherits those traits but tames them: his Bacchanalia become civic feasts, his excess transformed into collective ritual. Two faces of the same wine. Wild and unbridled in Greece, convivial and social in Rome.
For the Greeks, Dionysus was said to have been born with a vine coiled around his wrist, torn apart in death, and reborn each spring. He did not merely invent wine; he was wine. It flowed, red and unsettling, from amphorae, a truth that overturned certainties. To drink it was to invite chaos, to strip away the mask and expose the raw impulse beneath decorum.
In the Gospels, the story takes a different turn. At the wedding feast at Cana, Christ turns water into wine. It is no parlour trick, but an offering: the celebration continues, joy is restored, and the wine is finer than before. Later, he chooses to inhabit the chalice itself, becoming blood, shared and consumed by humankind – every Sunday, for two millennia.
Mead: honey of the Norse gods
The Norse gods craved more than rest. They sought in drink what even battle could not grant: entry to mystery. This was no grape harvest, but the memory of a man, Kvasir. Born of a pact, revered as a sage, he embodied wisdom without guile.
When the dwarves Fjalar and Galar killed him, it was not to silence him but to capture his essence. They let his blood ferment in honey, long and slow, until it breathed and rose. From this crime came a mead unlike any other, sealed in three great jars. Not a drink for distraction, but for enlightenment.
Whoever drank it became a poet, a prophet or a god. Sometimes, he became Odin. For only a god could steal the secret, but it takes a mortal to dare to drink it.
In the low houses of the high plateaux, as the light softens, women chew maize as others might say prayers. They mix it with breath and saliva, then leave it to rest in the warm shadows of jars, guarded by stone and ancestors.
When ready, the brew is poured slowly into clay cups foaming at the rim. No one drinks before tilting a hand to the ground, offering the first sip to Pachamama – faceless goddess, beating heart of the earth, silent presence within all things.
Chicha binds and connects. It seeps into bodies, stirring forgotten depths. It is drunk with kin, yet always with the land.
Each year, Osiris dies, torn apart by his brother Seth and then reassembled by Isis, who breathes him back to life. His body becomes the vine; his blood flows as red wine in funerary rites. Amphorae are sealed and placed in burial chambers as guides for the journey beyond.
Here in Egypt, wine accompanied both kings and commoners into eternity. It was not merely a symbol, but a presence. Osiris was not simply contemplated: he was drunk, in silence, within the tombs.
In Shintō shrines, sake is offered as a sacred gift. At weddings, it unites two souls; at funerals, it honours those who have departed. On the altars, it rests alongside rice, salt and fruit.
Each sip is taken without words, yet never without presence. To drink sake is to learn the weight of silence – the hidden harmony between gestures and the unseen forces that surround them.
What would Bacchus drink in 2025?
A natural sparkling wine with no added sulphites?
A craft IPA brewed on a houseboat in Bordeaux?
Or perhaps he’s switched to kombucha between yoga retreats.
The gods, after all, tend to reflect the fashions of their times.
As for us, perhaps we too have a chance to discover our own divine nectar – like in The Drops of God, the cult manga by Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto, where each wine is both a riddle and a revelation.
For the truest divine nectar is the one that moves us – the drink that, for a fleeting moment, lets us glimpse something greater: a presence felt through absence, the scent of a lost world.
Sometimes, a single sip is enough to feel immortal.
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