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(a) an Italian and

(b) a German version?

10. What is the main ingredient that imparts bitterness to bitters and to some other drinks?

GIN

“Drunk for 1d, dead drunk for 2d, clean straw for nothing.” It is apparently compulsory to give that quotation, supposed without any evidence to have come from a notice displayed outside eighteenth-century gin-shops in London, in every book about drink and article on gin. However, it does serve to make the point that gin had for many years a thoroughly unrespectable “image,” not quite lost even today. Like Scotch whisky, and unlike vodka and white rum, gin is associated with people who like drink.

1. Give the derivation of the word “gin.”

2. Gin has always had a pretty bad press. The very first citation in OED, dated 1714, refers to it as an “infamous Liquor” and “intoxicating”—not just inebriating but fatally poisonous. A later writer called it “liquid Madness sold at tenpence the quartern” (gill or quarter-pint) in 1839. Can you say who?

3. Not all writers have taken such a harsh view. Which famous poet, asked where he got his inspiration from, replied, “Gin and drugs, dear lady, gin and drugs”?

4. What is unusual about the flavour of gin compared with that of brandy, whisky and most other spirits?

5. Where and when was gin (probably) first made, and what was its first use?

6. What are the basic materials from which gin is distilled?

7. Apart from the advantages of its being the capital, what was it about London that made it an excellent place to set about making gin?

8. What is pink gin? Be specific.

9. How long must newly-distilled London gin be matured in cask or vat before it is ready for bottling?

10. A drink based on gin was drunk by Sir Horatio (later Lord) Kitchener’s officers during the campaign in the Sudan in 1898. What was it, or what is it now called?

LIQUEURS

This is a wide, vague term embracing drinks made by radically different processes (see q 1). A few years ago one could safely have drawn the generalization that liqueurs were used for drinking after meals. They still are, but what must be a greater quantity finds its way into mixed drinks. Southern Comfort from the US is the example here, allegedly to be seen in company with white wine or even tequila.

The word itself is a useful shibboleth, separating the good Joes who make it rhyme with “secure” from the affected persons who frenchify it as “lee-cur.”

1. The Danish drink familiarly known as Cherry Heering and the almost equally famous Kirsch from the upper Rhine region both taste of cherries, but there is a basic difference in their modes of manufacture. State it briefly.

2. Not many liqueurs are based on gin, but Sloe Gin is. I can reveal that it is obtained by steeping sloes (small wild plums) in gin. What is the traditional occasion for serving it?

3. What was the most important result of the battle of Culloden?

4. Name the odd man out:

Grand Marnier Orange Curaçao

Yellow Chartreuse Strega Benedictine.

5. Why should a liqueur made from Armagnac, honey and herbs remind me of pelota?

6. What are you supposed to do when a glass of Sambuca, an Italian liqueur made with witch elder-brush (eh?) and liquorice, is served to you with three coffee-beans floating in it?

7. Name liqueurs made with:

(a) mint

(b) apples

(c) blackcurrants

(d) caraway seeds

(e) plums.

Easy. An extra mark for naming the country of origin.

8. Name liqueurs made with:

(a) lemon-tree leaves

(b) arbutus berries

(c) walnuts

(d) naartjies

(e) shaddocks.

Not so easy. Country of origin as before.

9. Liqueurs are often used in cocktails, of which the best-known is probably the White Lady. Give its main ingredients.

10. Who is supposed to have introduced liqueurs into France? (Clue: she came to marry the Dauphin of the day.)

RUM

Rum started in the Caribbean, where the Royal Navy took it up in the early eighteenth century because it kept better than beer and, presumably, made life just bearable. The daily rum ration, to which the seamen’s rights were carefully