Empire of Booze: British History Through the Bottom of a Glass

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damp climate. This sheer ingenuity in creating alcoholic drinks is peculiar to Britain. Papers were read at the Royal Society in the 17 th Charming . . . Never mind books about drink – a book you can drink, now that’s a Christmas gift. Spectator Britain, champagne would have been flat and sweet. Port? Well, the names on the bottles are a clue: Taylor’s, Churchill’s, Smith Woodhouse. We went on to

How did this small archipelago exert such influence on drinks? Like most cold countries, we have a fondness for alcohol. The Russians have vodka, the Swedes have schnapps and the Mongolians have fermented mare’s milk. The British, however, have a whole smorgasbord of drinks to compensate for the cold, The British are the most cosmopolitan people in all history. Forget the empire for a moment; that was just part of it. Aside from that, Britons travelled and traded in the world far more widely than they colonised it, unless you want to count travel and trade as forms of “imperialism”, which some do. They also emigrated, sometimes to their colonies, but more often not. This is why their presence and their legacy are still felt, even after all these years of shrinkage as a nation. In Empire of Booze Henry Jeffreys traces their contribution t o the alcoholic drinking habits of the world. His claim is that Britain, rather than, say, France or Germany, “the country with the greatest influence on wine and drink in general”. It’s a bold assertion, but after reading this book one can see what he means. are faring today and will include recommendations so you can drink your way through the book. Britain’s legacy has been much argued over. The lasting gifts Breezy read on the history of the British Empire as it interacted with and influenced the production and distribution of alcoholic drinks. Jeffreys' main point is that, though most spirits/wines are not produced in Britain, over the last centuries they have been produced mainly FOR the UK market, and thus English tastes have been hugely influential in determining what wine, whiskey, port, rum, champagne, gin, sherry, madeira, and beer taste and look like today.fortune. Later colonists would attempt to ape the classic European wines in parts of the Empire with grape-growing climates. choice for weary empire builders far from home. Is it any wonder that one of the world’s bestselling whiskies, Cutty Sark, is named after that 19 th century symbol of globalisation, the clipper ship? As the dominant power at this time, it was Britain that created the first global drinks. Without alcohol, the pre-20 th century global economy could not function. The thirst of Britain’s burgeoning overseas empire needed slaking, so Otherwise Britain’s contribution was the mercantile one; “commercial nous”, as Jeffreys puts it, “rather than viticultural skill”. It was merchants who were responsible for the vast spread of Scotch whisky, as opposed to Irish or Bourbon, over the world. It was a Briton who built the first brewery in India. (His son was later responsible for the most notorious atrocity in Anglo-Indian history, the Amritsar massacre; Jeffreys has missed this.)

From renowned booze correspondent Henry Jeffreys comes this rich and full-bodied history of Britain and the Empire, told through the improbable but true stories of how the world’s favourite alcoholic drinks came to be. Henry Jeffreys is everything you want a wine writer to be: funny, knowing, unpretentious but also un-blokeish, funny, clever, refreshing, original, funny and inquisitive. And did I say funny? Craig Brown, author and parodist will be a loose history of Britain told through booze. Each chapter will focus on a drink and a period, but it will also look at how these classic drinks to the world of the English language, railways and organised sports are much noted, but I would argue that our greatest gifts to the world are our

Summary

I suppose I would have liked to read more about booze in America. This is often touched on, but we don't get an entire chapter on it like we do, for example, with Australia. On the other hand, perhaps Australia fits better into a single chapter while America would have required a second volume? No offense to the Aussies. There is plenty of booze history left out, even as it relates to the English empire, which is the focus of the book, but what is included is good. I’d love to say it was a bottle of Chateau Palmer 61 drunk with my grandfather but I didn’t have that sort of upbringing. My parents drank wine but I never particularly liked the sort of hard earthy wine my father bought. In retrospect it was probably quite good Bordeaux. I much preferred going to the pub and drinking beer with my father. Read about how we owe the champagne we drink today to seventeenth-century methods for making sparkling cider; how madeira and India Pale Ale became legendary for their ability to withstand the long, hot journeys to Britain’s burgeoning overseas territories; and why whisky became the familiar choice for weary empire builders who longed for home. topic of discussion was which country’s booze we could not do without. It was during one of these high-spirited arguments that I mentioned that without