The Whitaker of the period — France without wine — Babylonian boozers — Beer discovered by the Egyptians — A glass of bitter for Cleopatra — Brainless Persians — German sots — Turning the tables — Intemperance in the North — Chinese intoxicants — Nature of Sack — Mead and morat — Vinous metheglin — Favourite tipple of the Ancient Britons — Braggonet — Birch-wine — “The invariable” of Falstaff — A recipe by Sir Walter Raleigh — Saragossa wine — Usquebaugh — Clary — Apricock wine.

Pliny—whose works contain almost as much general information as Whitaker’s Almanack—tells us that the western nations got drunk with certain liquors made with fruits; and that those liquors have different names in Gaul and Spain, though they produce the same effect. Ammianus Marcellinus reports that “the Gauls having no wine in their country”—only fancy what a country France must have been to live in without champagne and claret, not to mention burgundy and cider—“though they are very fond of it, contrive a great many sorts of liquors which produce the same effect as wine.” The Scythians, too, had no wine, but got “for’ard” {23} just the same. One of their philosophers, upon being asked if they had nobody who played the flute in Scythia, replied that “they had not so much as any wine there.” Which seems to hint to flute-playing being a thirsty trade, even in those days.

The Babylonians were, according to Herodotus, habitual over-estimators of their swallowing capacity, and got merry after inhaling the fumes of certain herbs which they burned; which sounds like anything but a comfortable debauch, and must have choked some of them. Strabo tells all who care to read him that the Indians drank the juice of sugar-canes, which we now call rum; whilst according to Pliny and Athenaeus the Egyptians fuddled themselves with a drink made from barley; evidently undeveloped beer. And it is quite on the cards that Cleopatra occasionally drew, with her own fair hands, for her beloved Antony, a glass of “bitter,” with a head on it.

But the quaintest and most awe-inspiring of all drinks seems to have been that affected by the Persians—now decent, sober people enough; this was a liquor made from boiled poppy-seeds, and called
Kokemaar.

They drank it scalding hot, in the presence of many spectators, who may or may not have been charged for admission.

“Before it operates,” wrote a chronicler of the times, “they quarrel with one another, and give abusive language, without coming to blows; afterwards when the drug begins to have its {24} effect, then they also begin to make peace. One compliments in a very high degree, another tells stories, but all are extremely ridiculous both in their words and actions.” And after mentioning other liquors which they use, he adds, “It is difficult to find in Persia a man that is not addicted to one of these liquors, without which they think they cannot live but very unpleasantly.” Anything nastier than hot laudanum as a restorative I cannot imagine.

It sounds curious to read that France and Spain were censured by that universal provider of knowledge, Pliny, for their drunkenness with beer and ale, “wines not being in that age so frequent.” What was the world like before the invention of port wine, I wonder? For in Pliny’s time Italy exceeded all parts of the world for her luscious and curious vintages, being responsible for 195 different sorts of wines.
Their Names and Kinds innumerable are,
Nor for their Catalogue we need not care;
Which who would know as soon may count the Sands
The Western Winds raise on the Libyan Strands.

At a much later date, in the seventeenth century, Italy still held her own in the matter of the juice of the grape; and then, as now, their Chianti and Lachrymae Christi were justly celebrated. Strange to say at the same period the Germans, we read, “are much given to drunkenness, as one of their own countrymen writes of them; they drink so immodestly and immoderately at their Banquets that they cannot pour their beer {25} in fast enough with the ordinary Quaffing Cups, but drink in large Tankards whole draughts, none to be left under severe penalties; admiring him that will drink most, and hating him that will not pledge them.”

I once, in my salad days, assisted in the attempt to make a German “foxed.” There were some half a dozen of us, nice boys all, and we entertained this Teuton right royally. At the banquet table the champagne was decanted, and it was so arranged that our guest should imbibe at least twice as much as anybody else. Then we took him around the great city. At four the next morning the German sat facing me in the smoking-room of a little social club. Everybody else had gone home, more or less limp, or had come to anchor in some police-station. And I did not feel very well myself. And as the clock chimed four, and the grey dawn stole in through the venetians in streaks, that German uprose in all his majesty—he was six feet five inches and broad in proportion—smote me hard on the back, and enquired, in cheerful tones: “Now then! Vhere can ve go to haf some fun?” We never “took on” any more of the children of the Fatherland.

The Russians, Swedes, Danes, and other Northerners—also during the seventeenth century—we read, “exceed all the rest, having made the drinking of Brandy, Aqua Vitae, Hydromel, Beer, Mum, Meth, and other liquors in great quantities, so familiar to them that they usually drink our countrymen to death.”

“The Mahometans,” the same writer tells us, {26} “which possess a great part of the world, on a superstitious account forbear the drinking of much wine; because that a young and beautiful woman being accosted by two angels, that had intoxicated themselves with it”—an intoxicated angel surely takes the cake?—“taking the advantage of their ebriety, made her escape, and was for her beauty and wit prefer’d in Heaven, and the angels severely punished for their folly; for which reason they are commanded not to drink wine. Yet many of them, doubting of the divinity of that relation, do transgress that command, and liberally drink of the blood of the grape, which the Christians prepare out of their own vineyards; palliating their crime, in that they did not plant the tree, nor make the wine.” For the philosophy of the Mahomedan is like the ways of the Heathen Chinee, “peculiar.”

“The Chineses,” we are further told, “are the least addicted to ebriety, delighting themselves in Coffee, Tea, and such like drinks, free from those stupifying qualities; yet are they not without their carouses; and those of the intoxicating drinks prepared of Rice, Coco’s, Sugar, Dates, etc., equalling in strength and spirit any liquors in the world.”

With the “Chineses” must be of course included the gallant little Japaneses, with which nation English chroniclers had but a slight acquaintance three hundred years ago.

Without enquiring too closely into the nature of Red Falernian, Coan, Massic, or any of the Roman vintages at the time of dear old Horatius Flaccus, let us take a glance over the wine-lists {27} of our own country, from the Saxon period. And the first thing which will naturally strike the observer is the heavy, loaded nature of their dinner drinks. A little later on, Sack did duty for the “inferior sherry” of the Victorian era, although a Sack-and-Angostura was not a frequent demand amongst the young bloods of the period. On the festive boards of the Saxons appeared, besides ale of the strongest and cider of the roughest, home-made wines, mead, morat, metheglin, and more or less odoriferous pigments. In case any enterprising ratepayer should elect to give his guests
Mead,

at his next house-warming, here is the ancient recipe.

    Take of spring-water what quantity you please, and make it more than blood-warm, and dissolve honey in it till ’tis strong enough to bear an egg, the breadth of a shilling; then boil it gently near an hour, taking of the scum as it rises; then put to about nine or ten gallons seven or eight large blades of mace, three nutmegs quartered, twenty cloves, three or four sticks of cinnamon, two or three roots of ginger, and a quarter of an ounce of Jamaica pepper; put these spices into the kettle to the honey and water, a whole lemon, with a sprig of sweet-briar and a sprig of rosemary; tie the briar and rosemary together, and when they have boiled a little while take them out and throw them away; but let your liquor stand on the spice in a clean earthen pot till the next day; then strain it into a vessel that is fit for it; put the spice in a bag, and hang it in the vessel, stop it, and at three months {28} draw it into bottles. Be sure that ’tis fine when ’tis bottled; after ’tis bottled six weeks ’tis fit to drink.

Fancy drinking Mead with your soup!

Morat was made of honey flavoured with mulberry juice; and Pigment—which might be drunk at the Royal Academy banquets—was a sweet and rich liquor evolved from highly-spiced wine flavoured with honey.
Metheglin

was also called Hydromel and Oinomel. “The best Receipt whereof,” writes an authority, “that I have observed to be made by them is thus:—

    They take rasberries which grow in those parts (i.e. Swedeland, Muscovia, Russia, and as far as the Caspian Sea) and put them into fair water for two or three nights (I suppose they bruise them first) that the water may extract their taste and colour. Into this water they put of the purest honey, in proportion about one pound of honey to three or four of water. Then to give it a fermentation they put a tost into it dipp’d in the dregs or grounds of beer, which when it hath set the metheglin at work they take out again, to prevent any ill savour it may give; if they desire to ferment it long they set it in a warm place; which when they please to hinder or stop, they remove it into a cool place; after it hath done fermenting they draw it off the lee for present use; to add to its excellency they hang in it a little bagg, wherein is cinnamon, grains of paradise, and a few cloves. This may do very well for present drinking. But if you would make your metheglin of the same ingredients, and to be kept (time {29} meliorating any sort of drinks) you may preserve your juice of rasberries at the proper season. And when you make your metheglin, decoct your honey and water together, and when it is cold then add your juice of rasberries which was before prepared to keep, and purifie your metheglin by the means before prescrib’d, or ferment it, either by a tost dipp’d in yest, or by putting a spoonful of yest unto it, to which you may add the little bagg of spices before mention’d. Then let it stand about a month to be thorowly purified, and then bottle it, and preserve it for use, and it may in time become a curious drink.”

I should think so.

This is what Howell (Clerk to the Privy Council in 1640) wrote about metheglin:—
The juice of Bees, not Bacchus, here behold,
Which British Bards were wont to quaff of old;
The berries of the grape with Furies swell,
But in the honeycomb the Graces dwell.

“Neither Sir John Barleycorn or Bacchus had anything to do with it, but it is the pure juice of the bee, the laborious bee, and the king of insects; the Druids and old British Bards were wont to take a carouse hereof before they entered into their speculations. But this drink always carried a kind of state with it, for it must be attended with a brown toast; nor will it admit but of one good draught, and that in the morning; if more it will keep a humming in the head, and so speak too much of the house it comes from, I mean the hive.”

M’yes. I question the advisability of any sort {30} of carouse before entering into speculations; more especially if Tattersall’s Ring be the scene of your speculations, and you intend getting back your losses.

There is no doubt that metheglin was the favourite drink of the Ancient Britons.
Mead and Braggon, or Braggonet,

do not differ materially from metheglin. Here is the recipe:—

    Mix the whites of six eggs with twelve gallons of spring-water; add twenty pounds of the best virgin honey and the peeling of three lemons; boil it an hour, and then put into it some rosemary, cloves, mace, and ginger; when quite cold add a spoonful or two of yeast, tun it, and when it has done working stop it up close. In a few months bottle it off, and deposit in a cool cellar.

If this liquor is properly kept, the taste of the honey will go off; and it will resemble Tokay both in strength and flavour. And the chief objection to this as to other ancient potations, appears to be the intolerable quantity of water, whether “spring” or “fair.”

We do not make Birch wine nowadays, although the Birch itself frequently makes small boys whine, after conviction of orchard-robbing, or train-wrecking. But it was a favourite tipple with our ancestors, who during the month of March were wont to cut the ends off the birch-boughs, and let the sap drip into bottles suspended from the boughs. For twopence or threepence a gallon the villagers would catch this sap for {31} their wealthier neighbours, regardless of the feelings, and the cartridges, of the owners of the trees. To every gallon of liquor was added a pound of refined sugar, the mixture being boiled for half an hour or so, then set to cool, with a little yeast added thereto, to make it ferment. The result was then put in barrels, together with a small proportion of powdered mace and cinnamon. A month afterwards it was bottled off, and when drunk was said to be “a most delicate, brisk wine, of a flavour like unto Rhenish.”

“The Vertues of the Liquor or Blood of the Birch-tree,” says the historian, “have not long been discovered, we being beholding to the Learned Van Helmont for it; who in his Treatise of the Disease of the Stone hath very much applauded its Vertues against the effects of the Disease, calling the natural Liquor that flows from the wounded Branches of the Tree, the meer Balsom of the Disease. Ale brewed therewith, as well as the Wine that is made of it, wonderfully operates on the Disease. It is also reputed to be a powerful Curer of the Ptisick.”

All the same you will hardly get the alumni of Eton and Harrow to love their birch.

“What was
Sack?”

is a question which has often been asked. It was a common name for a drink in the time of Shakespeare, and Falstaff had a terrible reputation as a sackster. The exact nature of the wine is uncertain, but the name is supposed to be derived {32} from the Spanish seco, and the French sec, “dry.” Canary (a sort of white Madeira) was often the wine meant; and in old churchwarden’s accounts the word sack frequently occurs, as used as a communion wine, i.e. Madeira and port mixed. That sack was imported from Spain is certain, and it was first of all sold, in England, in apothecaries’ shops, as a cordial medicine. The Excise authorities of the time, if there were any, were in all probability not quite as busy as at the present day.

The name Canary was formerly applied to dry, white wines, which were frequently seasoned with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, roasted apples, and eggs.
Sack Posset

    [Sir Walter Raleigh’s Recipe.]

    Boil together half a pint of sherry and half a pint of ale, and add gradually a quart of boiling cream or milk. Sweeten the mixture well, and flavour with grated nutmeg. Put into a heated dish, cover, and stand by the fire for two or three hours.

And if you can see the double ox-fences in Northamp-ton-shire next morning, there is not much the mat-ter with your liver.

Here is the method of manufacturing
English Sack,

which must be a poor, ill-favoured sort of drink. It was also known as Saragossa wine.

    To every quart of water put a sprig of rue, and to every gallon a handful of fennel-roots, boil these {33} half an hour, then strain it out, and to every gallon of this liquor—ugh—put three pounds of honey; boil it two hours, and scum it well, and when ’tis cold pour it off and tun it into a vessel, or such cask as is fit for it; keep it a year in the vessel, and then bottle it. ’Tis a very good sack.

And the butler who would place this on my table would get a good sack, too. Mustard-and-water is cheaper and swifter.

Canary and Rhenish were also drunk freely during the Elizabethan period—the English Sack recipe belongs to the Charles I. period—and long before that usquebaugh, or whisky in all its original sin, was in demand, although the Highlanders were no dabs at distillation until the sixteenth century. Usquebaugh, by the way, is derived from the old Gaelic Uisge-beatha, “Water of Life,” and under this name both Irish and Scotch whisky were originally known.

But this simple water of life was not tasty enough for some palates, therefore vile men invented a special blend for the benefit of the wealthy, and those who had not much work to do next morning.
To make Usquebaugh.

    To three gallons of brandy put four ounces of aniseeds bruised; the next day distil it in a cold still pasted up; then scrape four ounces of licorice, and pound it in a mortar, dry it in an iron pan, do not burn it, put it in the bottle to your distill’d water, and let it stand ten days. Then take out the licorice, and to every six quarts of the spirits {34} put in cloves, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger, of each a quarter of an ounce, dates stoned and sliced four ounces; raisins stoned half a pound. Let these infuse ten days, then strain it out, and tincture it with saffron, and bottle it and cork it well.

It seems just the sort for Jubilee rejoicings and vestry meetings; but do not give it to the constable on fixed point duty.

In my pitiable ignorance, I once thought that Clary was the old English name for Claret. Not a bit of it. This is how the artistic used to make
Clary Wine.

    Take twenty-four pounds of Malaga raisins, pick and chop them very small, put them in a tub, and to each pound a quart of water; let them steep ten or eleven days—this sounds like a school treat—stirring it twice every day; you must keep it covered close all the while; then strain it off, and put it into a vessel, and about half a peck of the tops of clary (what was clary?) when ’tis in blossom; stop it close for six weeks, and then bottle it off; in two or three months ’tis fit to drink.

Clary naturally leads to
Apricock Wine,

which we of the nineteenth century miscall apricot. The derivation of the word is Latin. Then the Arabs got hold of it, and it became Al-precoc. Then the thriving Spaniards got hold of the word, which became Alborcoque; and so to England. But to the wine. {35}

    Take three pounds of sugar, and three quarts of water, let them boil together, and scum it well; then put in six pounds of apricocks, pared and stoned, and let them boil till they are tender; then take them up, and when the liquor is cold bottle it up. You may, if you please, after you have taken out the apricocks, let the liquor have one boil with a sprig of flower’d clary in it.

Also, you may if you please—and you probably will please—add a little old brandy to the decoction.