Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [104]
5. Barrels are ranked in tiers holding wines of different ages. When wine is taken for bottling from the oldest tier, that tier is topped up from the next oldest, and so on back. There are thus no “years” in sherry.
6. “Flor” (“flower”). Native to Jerez and still an unexplained phenomenon.
7. Roughly: Manzanilla, Fino, Amontillado, Oloroso, Cream. Roughly because there are occasional exceptions like sweetish Amontillados and dry Olorosos.
8. Both, plus the drinker’s concern for the state of his drink. Half a bottle is considered about right for one man and one session, and fino deteriorates very fast when the air gets to it.
9. Montilla is quite a strong wine but unfortified; sherry has brandy added to it.
10. (a) A drink of sherry, sugar or sweet liqueur (unless the sherry itself is sweet), lemon and pounded ice.
(b) A kind of overtrouser once worn by horsemen in the US. From the Polish “szarawary.”
MADEIRA , MARSALA AND OTHERS
1. Wood. English “material,” “matter.” When the Portuguese discovered the island in 1419 it was so thickly forested that a clearance fire is supposed to have burned for seven years.
2. That is the correct order. Malmsey is supposed to be the finest. However, when the Duke of Clarence was drowned in a butt of it in 1478 it was just another sweet white wine.
3. The label can hardly be contemporary, but it still might be telling the truth. If so, the wine would probably be marvellous. Madeira seems never to go over the top.
4. Prince Hal to Falstaff in “King Henry IV Part I.” Another anachronism of Shakespeare’s: Henry was all over before the island was even discovered. But it seems hard to care.
5. In west Sicily, the invention of an Englishman (of course). When based at Palermo in 1798 Nelson got to like it so much that he made it the official rn tipple for a time. Garibaldi called it “a strong and generous wine, like the men who fight with me for freedom.”
6. In zabaglione, the delicious sweet of egg-yolks and sugar.
7. Málaga.
8. Well, natural sweet wine, and if you think that pouring spirit into an already strong wine is a natural proceeding, no doubt the name will strike you as admirably appropriate. But still a great drink.
9. Banyuls, a “vin doux naturel” (see above).
10. No, not Nigeria—Australia. A dessert drink and mixer made from sweet white wine and brandy. Yalumba comes from an Aboriginal word meaning “all the land around.” But Yalumba table wines, some of which are now available in the UK, are perfectly serious.
COCKTAILS AND MIXED DRINKS
1. If you can, you have solved a mystery going back to 1806, when the word first reached print. No one has overturned the oed’s verdict, itself nearly a century old: “A slang name, of which the real origin appears to be lost,” And yet any day now . . .
2. My own shot: A short strong mixed drink served cold. So for instance the Collins (see q 6), being long, fails to qualify, whereas the Sour, the same thing minus soda, gets in.
3. In 1920 Prohibition stopped the legal production of alcoholic drinks in the US and all sorts of semi-potables were run up and passed off as gin and other spirits, so raw and foul that they had to be smothered with fruit, sugar, bitters, anything to hand.
4. All Manhattans contain a dash or two of Angostura bitters. The Sweet Manhattan (the usual variety) has sweet vermouth, the Dry dry, and the Medium a bit of both.
5. A short broad vertical-sided tumbler, preferably heavy. The Old-Fashioned is served with ice-cubes, and the breadth of the glass enables you to put enough in without piling them up above the surface of the drink and numbing your nose on them when you sip. Useful for any drink on the rocks.
6. Sugar and lemon-juice with ice, topped up with soda-water.
7. Champagne is the common denominator. The other ingredients are as follows:
(a) Fresh orange-juice. From Buck’s Club.
(b) Guinness. The mixture is also known as Bismarck.
(c) Fresh peach-juice—the Bellini.
(d) Angostura bitters, sugar, brandy—the (vile)