I accidentally posted this in r/AskHistory; I'm reposting it here.
I'm reading The Three Musketeers, and twice now, d'Artagnan has ordered a bottle of wine for himself to drink by himself in one sitting. Either the bottle is small, the wine is incredibly weak, or there's some artistic license going on for what purpose I know not. Which do you think most befitting the case?
The information I did find almost unanimously claimed, though without sources, that weak alcoholic drinks were preferred during this time because water was unclean. But this article says that this is merely a common misconception, and gives primary and secondary sources of people drinking water at many points in history without mentioning it being unclean. Besides, although I don't know anything about wine making, I suspect that it can't be made with less than about 10% alcohol, except by diluting it, or such wines would be available. Since we have cheeses that have been made the same way for centuries, wouldn't we have "small wine" today if it ever existed?
I know Rousseau mostly drank wine and milk (he thought water hard on the stomach) and claimed never to have been drunk. So that lends credence to the possibility that wine was weaker then. But how can we know what the alcohol content was? Did they measure it, as now?
A 13% bottle of wine has a similar amount of alcohol to 3 pints of strong beer and it's not uncommon for this quantity to be drunk at one session. It's not healthy, granted, but not uncommon either.
Is it also possible that there was simply a higher alcohol tolerance in a society where wine and ale are drunk at every meal?
I know you're asking about the strength of the beverage, but you also mentioned the size of the bottle. Although The Three Musketeers is set in the 17th century, it was written in the 19th century.
I'm not an expert on 17th century wine or how much Dumas knew about 17th century alcohol. However I've just finished reading Inside the Victorian Home by Judith Flanders, who points out that the bottles of wine consumed at 19th century dinners were not exactly equivalent to the same bottles today. Rather than today's 750 ml bottle, bottles generally varied between 375 and 690 ml, and while today wine averages 12.5% alcohol content, 19th century wine was from 8-9% up to 10-11%. So bottles were likely smaller and the wine was most likely a bit weaker.
(I'll put her own source citation in when I have the whole book in front of me later.)
Depending on the weather of a particular year but the alcohol in wine would likely range from 10% to 14% with 11% or 12% being fairly typical. Most regions had rules of when grapes could be picked and the people making the decisions tended to want stronger more ripe wines.
Either the bottle is small, the wine is incredibly weak, or there's some artistic license going on for what purpose I know not. Which do you think most befitting the case?
Three Musketeers was set in the 17th century and that's about 200+ years before wine was shipped in bottles or bottles had any sort of standardized size. In modern times a bottle of wine is mostly standardized on 750 ML but at the time of writing the bottle (most likely a carafe) could have been any sized. Also, have you read it in its native French? If you read it in English the use of "Bottle" is a translation and may or may not be what the original author used. Furthermore even though it takes place in the 17th century it was written in 1844 and the author would have used his contemporary drinking culture as a basis and not necessarily known what the drinking patterns were in the 17th century.
Also one person drinking 750 ML of wine isn't that big a deal. Especially if they are a regular drinker and have a modicum of tolerance.