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Thursday, October 1, 2009

About: Toast

Ever wondered why we drink to a "Toast"?  I heard this on Radio Rhima the other day...

Aparently it all started back in the ancient times when people would poison unwanted opponents through their wine.  People would invite people over for dinner, and offer them a drink.  To not drink would be incredibly rude.  Thus it became custom for the Host to drink the first drink from the bottle, signalling it was clean and safe.

In Rome, it became custom to add a peice of burnt bread into the wine, apparently to remove the flavour or smells from bad wine.  The burnt charcoal was "tostus" in Latin from which we derive our english word "Toast", meaning "roasted".

By the middle ages, it became even more popular and spread throughout europe where it became known that drinking a "toast" was the same as drinking a glass of wine with toast.  This has now evidently evolved to be the same as drinking.

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