u/Consistent_Major_123

I'm asking this after reading napoleonic accounts, most notably Coignet's notebooks. It's almost common knowledge that people had been drinking low-alchohol beer to cleanse their drink of bacteria, but as I read the early notebooks Coignet writes having been served wine as a young child like it's common practice. This then reminds me that the standard Napoleonic ration for a French soldier consisted of wine.

Was this wine the same idea as the 'watered down beer'? Or have the french genuinely been alcoholics their entire lives? Why not beer? Asking on both the specific rationing side and general drink of choice for the civilian population.