Washington’s guests drank more than 150 bottles of alcohol days before the Constitution was signed.

City Tavern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Credit: © aimintang—iStock Unreleased/Getty Images
Author Nicole Villeneuve
September 15, 2026

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The Constitution may be one of the most weighty documents in United States history, but the festivities held just days before it was signed were hardly solemn. 

On September 14, 1787, George Washington and 54 other guests gathered at Philadelphia’s City Tavern for a farewell dinner. The Constitutional Convention, during which the Founding Fathers had spent nearly four months hammering out the new nation’s governing document, was nearing its end. By the end of the night, the bar tab showed that Washington and his companions had enjoyed more than a few drinks.

The surviving bill lists 54 bottles of Madeira wine, 60 bottles of claret wine, eight bottles of whiskey, eight bottles of cider, 22 bottles of porter, and 12 bottles of beer. That’s 164 bottles of alcohol for 55 guests — and that doesn’t even take into account the seven large bowls of punch, which also could have contained alcohol.

The tab included a line item for broken tumblers and wine glasses, too. While all of this certainly paints a picture of a memorable night out — or, more likely, a night that not many remembered at all — the gathering wasn’t necessarily debaucherous for everyone. Historians have said that Washington, who by then was already one of the most revered figures in the fledgling nation, was probably more likely to have watched the scene unfold around him. 

A few days later, another dinner was held for the framers of the Constitution, at the same City Tavern, and it’s likely they would have had a similar bar bill. Shortly thereafter, on September 17, the delegates gathered at Independence Hall and signed the Constitution.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

Thomas Jefferson spent years trying to make his own vineyard at Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson is known to have helped popularize ice cream and macaroni and cheese in America, but he was also a passionate wine drinker — and even attempted for years to grow his own grapes. Jefferson tried establishing vineyards at Monticello as early as 1774, continuing throughout his presidency and beyond. His experiments were ultimately unsuccessful, however, due to Virginia’s late frosts, native pests such as phylloxera, and fungal diseases such as black rot. Though it appears he never successfully produced wine from grapes grown at Monticello, Jefferson did amass a substantial wine collection, spending an estimated $16,500 on bottles during his presidency — upwards of $430,000 today.

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