Uncork a Victorian Christmas
M ost festive traditions, such as Christmas trees, cards and mince pies, date back to the long reign of Queen Victoria. So this year I thought it would be fun to have a Victorian-themed Christmas: we’ll buy the biggest turkey, ice skate on the Thames (fat chance) – and send our three-year-old daughter out carol singing to pay for it all.
Queen Victoria’s drink of choice was a mix of claret and whisky. But all the world’s great drinks were available in London at the time, and they had more or less assumed their present form by the end of Victoria’s reign. Champagne had gone from being a sweet, syrupy drink to the bone-dry aperitif we know today, gin became smooth and aromatic and claret entered its golden age.
Thanks to William Gladstone’s Single Bottle Act of 1861, for the fi rst time ordinary people also could buy wine by the bottle. Previously they would have to have bought at least a case and visited a specialist merchant. Grocers’ shops and the new department stores that were founded at this time were now selling wine, and it led to a boom in consumption fuelled by early mass marketing.
So here’s what we’ll be drinking – a couple of pricey but quality table wines and a couple of great-value ones.
Queen Victoria’s drink of choice was a mix of claret and whisky. But all the world’s great drinks were available in London at the time, and they had more or less assumed their present form by the end of Victoria’s reign. Champagne had gone from being a sweet, syrupy drink to the bone-dry aperitif we know today, gin became smooth and aromatic and claret entered its golden age.
Thanks to William Gladstone’s Single Bottle Act of 1861, for the fi rst time ordinary people also could buy wine by the bottle. Previously they would have to have bought at least a case and visited a specialist merchant. Grocers’ shops and the new department stores that were founded at this time were now selling wine, and it led to a boom in consumption fuelled by early mass marketing.
So here’s what we’ll be drinking – a couple of pricey but quality table wines and a couple of great-value ones.