No you are not.
ANGLERPHOBE HAS SPOKEN!
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Often is a perfectly suitible word in this case. People were often in situations where reliable access to good water was not possible, and therefore had to use alternatives which frequently involved alcohol. Its place in history is I suppose in its association with military campaigns and voyages of discovery, and the fact that drinking heavily was expensive and therefore done in high society. Greek symposia were pretty much high society booze ups, for instance. People who were powerful and influential in history and people who were oenophiles were therefore often the same people. As a cultural norm, that has carried into modern society in the same way as many of our other vices in the West.