Clinking your deoxyephedrine against those of yourdrinkingbuddies before you all knock backshotsseems a fiddling likehigh - fiving , fist - bumping , or some other movement of camaraderie . And that ’s pretty much what the most populartheorybehind the tradition boils down to . In ancient time , people just passed around a single cup — so when that got phased out in favor of separate receptacles , tapping them together maintained that same sense of kinship .
And if you have any experience taking shots in a bar ( or really just being in a cake ) , you may have noticed another trend : After the cheer , people often tap their glasses on the legal community or mesa before drinking . As with regular toast , it ’s not decipherable exactly when , where , or why this customs duty began . But these days , most drinkers will cite one of two common reasons behind it . The first is slightly more morbid than you may have expected .
go out back to ancient times , again , drinkers sometimes “ pelt one out”—literallypoureda beverage on the ground — as a protection to at rest comrades or loved ones who would otherwise have been there imbibing with them . As Vine Pairexplains , many regard tapping your glass on the bar a modernistic - Clarence Day , less wasteful way of life of doing the same thing .
If you ’re not keen on think about loss and death every time you do a tequila shot , you might prefer the second reason for the tap : It ’s plainly a augury ofrespectto the bartender , the waitstaff , and the establishment overall . Since the toast is for your buddies and the drink itself is for you , it makes sense that you ’d add in a short hat - summit to the place that made it all potential .
Those are n’t the only two explanations bond to the custom . Some say , for example , it’srootedin an old Irish superstition whereby tapping your glass on the table rids your drink of evil spirits . Whatever the case , your mixologist will definitely appreciate a tap much more than a full drink dumped on the floor .
[ h / tVine Pair ]
A version of this story originally guide in 2021 ; it has been update for 2023 .
