Learn
Why we clink glasses
The poisoning story is almost certainly false. What the custom actually seems to be about is more interesting, and better evidenced.
Overview
The story everybody knows is that clinking glasses caused wine to slosh between them, proving neither was poisoned. It is repeated constantly and there is essentially no historical evidence for it. It also does not survive a moment’s thought: anyone willing to poison a guest would simply decline to clink.
The likelier explanation is duller and better supported. Drinking is the one sense-engaging act that leaves hearing unoccupied — you see the wine, smell it, taste it and feel it, and the clink completes the set. The custom of making a noise together also does what most table rituals do: it marks a shared moment and synchronises a group.
Toasting itself has a documented history in classical Greece and Rome, where libations were poured and healths drunk, and the English word "toast" comes from the practice of putting spiced bread in the cup.
None of which means the poisoning story is worth suppressing. It is worth labelling: a good story, widely repeated, with nothing behind it.
The poison origin is folk etymology of the same family as most "this custom began because…" explanations. WineHQ records it as unevidenced rather than repeating it, and does not assert the alternative explanation as fact either — it is a reasonable account rather than a documented one.
Sources
Sources consulted
- The Oxford Companion to Wine — Oxford University Press
More in learn
Learn
Reading a wine list without anxiety
How lists are organised, what the ordering tells you, and the two questions that get you a better bottle than any amount of studying.
Learn
Wine at the table, without the theatre
Who pours, who tastes, how much goes in the glass — and which of these conventions have a reason behind them.
Learn
Harvest — the one month a wine region stops
Vendange, vendemmia, Lese, harvest. Why the calendar of a wine region is organised around a few unpredictable weeks, and what that does to the places that live by it.