Buckner Trawick's Shakespeare

Buckner B. Trawick did the research on Shakespeare and Alcohol:

Words for drink appear two hundred and fifty-four times; there are eleven variants of the word drunkard, which itself appears nineteen times, including sponge, beast, Sir John Sack and Sugar, maltworm, tosspot, draught, sink, sewer, night brawler, fool, and slave of drink); and there are seven adjectival synonyms, including malmsey-nose, bottle-ale, ale-wash’d, intoxicates [intoxicated], swine-drunk, fluster’d, and reeling-ripe.

The word wine and its twelve varieties occur sixty-two times; ale and beer, twenty times; and the ‘hard liquors’ (aqua-vitae and cordial) fifteen.

“One is tempted to infer that Shakespeare’s characters as a whole (and perhaps his audience and himself) were about eight times as familiar with wine as with beer and still less familiar with distilled drinks.”

No. One isn't. Rather, one is tempted to infer that Mr. Trawick is taking all this a bit too far.