Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [100]
2. (a) A type of giant grass.
(b) The Azores. Columbus brought cuttings to the West Indies on his second voyage.
3. “Old Grog” was the nickname of Admiral Edward Vernon (from his waterproof grogram boat-cloak). To limit drunkenness he ordered the men’s rum ration to be watered and issued in half-portions of a gill each twice a day. The equivalent of three pub doubles of 90° spirits at eleven o’clock in the morning is still not a small drink.
4. “White” or transparent. The darker rums gain their colour from the oak they mature in or from caramel, flavourless burnt sugar. Rum seems to have been artificially coloured in the first place to suit the Navy, which could not afford to risk having on board a strong spirit which the eye could mistake for water.
5. Possibly. They say that after Trafalgar the Admiral’s body was brought back to England in a cask of rum.
6. Imperial Spanish rule, after the Spanish-American war of 1898. With the US occupying forces came Coca Cola, then a comparatively new drink (first sold 1886).
7. The Daiquiri. From the place in Cuba where US marines landed in 1898 (see last answer). A duller story gets it from a tin or nickel mine whose manager’s butler thought up the drink.
8. One of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak, i.e. water or soda. The so-called American formula reverses one and two, three and four.
9. From the Caribbean, principally the island of Martinique. Saint James rum, or rather “rhum,” is very fine, offered alongside Cognac in Paris restaurants.
10. Puerto Rico. Bacardi set up its base there when Castro confiscated its Cuban property and now outsells all other brands of spirits in the US.
COGNAC AND ARMAGNAC
1. Cognac, half-way down the Atlantic coast; Armagnac, further down and further in, not far from the Pyrenees.
2. Grande Champagne. Nothing to do with the bubbly-producing part of east France, though that is the same word, meaning “grassy plain” or “open country” (obsolete English “champaign”).
3. (a) Early seventeenth century
(b) Early fifteenth century.
4. These are just manufacturers’ labels, but Three Star is the basic grade, which even connoisseurs will not mind you putting soda or other mixers in. Next come vo (Very Old) and vsop (Very Superior Old Pale), with xo (Extra Old) and Cordon Bleu somewhere in front. The initials of these English words appear throughout the trade, indeed chalked on the barrels in the blending-houses in Cognac itself, a satisfying reminder of our long grip on the trade.
A VSTO gives a different kind of lift. The Very Short Take-Off aircraft was the ancestor of the jump jet.
5. Sugar, up to 2 per cent.
Burnt sugar or caramel, up to 2 per cent.
Infusion of oak-chips, no limit, but not a thing you do much. Or talk about much.
6. Delaforce is a firm of port shippers. The others are Cognac houses.
7. (a) A pot still, used for two successive distillations.
(b) A unique type of continuous still.
8. Five minutes is plenty. No spirit improves in bottle.
9. Yes and no. A few bottles may survive from that period, would presumably fetch high prices as relics, but the contents would probably be off (and see last answer). Some firms use the term today merely to indicate a high grade, along with such phrases as “Grand Réserve.”
10. That which evaporates while the spirit is in cask, the equivalent of several million bottles a year. No way of controlling this has been found which does not damage the brandy.
BRANDY (ONE STEP DOWN )
1. Formerly brandwine, brandy-wine, from Dutch “bran-dewijn”= burnt, i.e. fired, i.e. distilled, wine. The Dutch had a lot of influence on the early Cognac trade.
2. Unsatisfactory, illogical, and firmly established trade term in UK and US for French brandy made outside the Cognac and Armagnac regions.
3. Quite likely a stare of pretended incomprehension, but on a good