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

Product Information

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 This is a difficult one to answer as following that rioja epiphany I got a job in Oddbins in Headingley where we drank a lot of very good wine though often in slightly strange circumstances: a bottle of Pesquera drunk after a techno night or a 1976 Von Buhl Spatlese drunk whilst watching the sun come up over Harrogate. These were memorable wines and I was certainly closer to my maker though not sure the wines were the main reason. damp climate. This sheer ingenuity in creating alcoholic drinks is peculiar to Britain. Papers were read at the Royal Society in the 17 th

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 Even if you don't like wine, and you don't like reading, you will enjoy reading Henry Jeffreys on wine and other 'tipples'. Rachel Johnson, author and journalist In the late 1990s I worked for a wine merchant. We were paid very little, but given a thorough education in wine. After a long evening tasting, a favourite Without alcohol, the pre-20 th century global economy could not function. The thirst of Britain’s burgeoning overseas empire needed slaking, soI’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. The Bollinger was not like any Champagne I’d ever had before. It was a deep golden colour and the texture was like custard, sparkling custard, if you can imagine such a thing. The complexity was simply astonishing. We were fairly blasé about good Champagne but this made everyone stop and marvel. It turned me on to a mature, rich style of champagne which I wish I had the money to drink more often. Of course, it didn’t happen. It was always very unlikely to. Most book don’t sell. I also think the timing was bad. When I first started working on Empire of Booze , narrative non-fiction was all the rage. You know the kind of thing, how one man’s quest for cheese conquered a kingdom and changed the world. By the time it came out, such books were dead. Furthemore a book celebrating British exceptionalism in 2016 seemed to really annoy some people. I can’t think why.

Britain, none of our favourite wines would exist. What chauvinistic nonsense, my colleagues said. And then we started naming drinks and trying to find theThrough the medium of drink, we can chart the rise of British power from a small corner of Europe to global pre-eminence. British culture, literature, The book is easy to read, with good humor, and good pace. I really liked the sections "Drinking the Empire" in which he gives suggestions for each of the drinks, especially those he thinks would be most like what used to be drunk at the time. Winner of the 2017 Fortnum & Mason Debut Drink Book award, this is a fascinating take on British history told through the stories behind the world's favourite alcoholic drinks 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 They also started the fashion for corking bottles – before then they had been sealed with paper and wax – facilitated by Britain’s close diplomatic relationship with Portugal, where most cork trees grow.

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 Hydrometers used in gin-making at the Balmenach Distillery, Speyside. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardianstrong drinks such as rum and India Pale Ale that could stand long hot journeys were developed. Whisky, an indigenous British drink, became the drink of 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. Charming . . . Never mind books about drink – a book you can drink, now that’s a Christmas gift. Spectator 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,

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. 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. Then you get a bit specialist. “ Inside Burgundy” (Jasper Morris) is the book I reach for most when I need to know something. It is impeccable. “ The Wines of Burgundy” (Clive Coates) is up there too. For a reference point on older wines then “Vintage Wine” (Michael Broadbent) is a must. And the paragraph above is lifted straight from what I wrote about “ Pomerol” (Neal Martin), which is the sort of book I’d like to write. Neal’s book is the last wine book I’ve read.Well argued and full of fascinating booze-related facts . . . it's an ambitious undertaking, but [Jeffreys] achieves it with a sharp eye and an understated humorous touch I rather liked. Daily Mail