'Well, there is no nation that drinks so hoggishly as the English. - What passes for wine among us is not the juice of the grape. It is an adulterous mixture, brewed up of nauseous ingredients, by dunces, who are bunglers in the art of poison-making; yet we and our forefathers are, and have been, poisoned by this cursed drench, without taste or flavour. - The only genuine and wholesome beverage in England is London porter and Dorchester table-beer; but as for your ale and your gin, your cider and your perry, and all the trashy family of made wines, I detest them as infernal compositions, contrived for the destruction of the human species...'
from Matt Bramble's letter to Dr Lewis, dated April 28, in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett
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