Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [97]
(c) The heavy natural wine minus the “aszu.”
2. A good full-bodied red table wine that goes down well with pizzas, stews, oxtail, shepherd’s pie, chili con carne, etc. Bull’s Blood is the name.
3. An Austrian wine for swilling, reputedly enjoyable. Not to be confused with schlock, Yiddish American for “rubbish.”
4. Othello. Well, Shakespeare’s Othello had a horrible time in Cyprus. Iago’s deadly plot against him started with a drinking-session, at which Cypriot wines were presumably on offer.
5. California (of course), New York, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Ohio. Take note that vineyards have been planted in Texas.
6. Argentina. But Chile probably leads in quality.
7. English wine is made from grapes by proper methods and is perfectly serious, though a bit marginal. British wine is imported as grape concentrate from nameless places, rehy-drated and fermented, finally blended and given a brand-name. In some cases, raisins are probably the nearest things to grapes it has ever seen.
8. 1790/1, which does sound a bit soon after the founding of the first settlement in 1788. They brought vine cuttings from Rio de Janeiro and the Cape—where they had had wine for 100 years before that.
9. The South African Wine Farmers’ Association. Tel: 01-734 9251.
10. Canada is in North America. The others are in Asia. (All five produce some wine.)
BEER IN GENERAL
1. Ale was made from fermented barley without added flavour, beer was treated with hops. In the UK beer was a novelty of the fifteenth century.
2. A type of dark beer apparently first brewed for, or popular with, London porters. Recently revived after long abeyance. Also see next answer.
3. Strong. “Stout porter” was the full expression, and what was once called an extra stout porter still flourishes. The colour of stout comes from the roasted barley used.
4. Steeping the barley in water causes it to germinate and convert its insoluble starch into soluble starch.
5. The infusion of malt which is boiled, hopped, and fermented into beer. The word rhymes with Bert.
6. Hops confer bitterness on the brew to balance the inherent slight sweetness of the malt content.
7. The Latin name, “Saccharomyces,” “sugar-mushroom,” tells the story. Yeast is a substance consisting of minute fungous organisms that produce fermentation, in the present case converting the sugars in the wort into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
8. That the beer is still fermenting, is a “natural” beer, unpasteurized.
9. Real Ale. “Cask-conditioned” is the jargon of brewers, who are nervous of the term Real Ale because they probably make unreal ale, i.e. keg, as well.
10. Beer is pasteurized by heating it and so killing yeasts and bacteria. It will now not change any further. The advantages of a consistent, stable product are obvious. The process is of course—by definition—frowned on by Real Ale lovers, but bottled and canned lagers as we know them would be impossible without it.
BEER IN PARTICULAR
1. “Lager” is German for warehouse or store. A lager beer is kept in store for up to three months to settle and mature.
2. From the town of Pilsen (Plzen) in West Czechoslovakia, where the first light-coloured lager was made in the last century. Pilsener Urquell is made there and exported to GB and elsewhere (“Urquell”= original source).
3. True. It has quite high alcohol and therefore calories. Not for dieters in the slimming sense but for those on a diabetic diet. And for beer-drinkers.
4. (a) Greece. From the brewery called that, a fair shot at the name of the German brewer, Füchs.
(b) Malaysia and Singapore, a Pilsener lager. The phrase is the title of a novel by Anthony Burgess.
5. That of the Pilgrim Fathers, who were bound for Virginia, but landed at Plymouth Rock, “our victuals being spent, especially our beer.”
6. (a) Belgium
(b) France (Strasbourg)
(c) Denmark
(d) Holland
(e) England—Vaux Breweries, Sunderland. Sorry, but the name was irresistible.
7. Allied Breweries, Bass, Courage, Scottish and