Liqueur

“ It is singular that the presence of a natural liqueur—the consequence of a complete but not excessive ripeness of the grape, and at present considered one of the highest qualities of the wine—was, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, regarded as a disease. ”

“ I was given some to drink in a tiny glass, and I never smell or taste cassis that the scent, color, warmth, and sweetness of that long-distant day does not flash upon me. The liqueur was being made by the farmer's wife; for part of the house, which, as I have said, papa at that time used only as a hunting-lodge, 154 was inhabited by a Belgian farmer and his family. ”

“ The coup-d’avant of vermuth has been already noticed as corresponding with the draught of mulsum; and the coup du milieu, which consists of some liqueur, ‘quod fluentem nauseam coerceat,’ may be regarded as identical with the cup of sweet wine handed round in the middle of a Grecian feast. With [301] dessert the luscious sweet wines are always introduced. ”

“ Edibles were represented only by a single dish of fruit; the tablecloth, stained with wine and cigar ash, seemed crowded with every sort of bottle and every sort of glass. A magnum of champagne, empty, another half full, stood in the middle of the table; whisky, brandy, liqueurs of various sorts were all represented; glasses—some full, some empty, some filled with cigar ash and cigarette stumps—an ugly sight! ”

“ Method.—Half fill clean, dry wine bottles with the fruit. Add to each 1 oz of crushed barley sugar, a little noyeau, or 2 or 3 drops of almonds. Fill the bottles with good unsweetened gin, cork them securely, and allow them to remain in a moderately warm place for 3 months. At the end of this time strain the liqueur through fine muslin or filtering paper until quite clear, then bottle it, cork securely and store for use. ”

“ Though the English upper classes, as I have said, drink with a certain moderation, their moderation really embraces a quantity of liquor which would send the artisan quite off his head. Whiskies-and-sodas at noon, Burgundy at lunch, with cognac to one's [Pg 152] coffee, three kinds of wine at dinner, followed by liqueurs and whisky, make no appreciable mark on a man who is living at his ease and can sleep as long as he likes ”

“ From the alcoholic beverages of the chafing-dish supper to those of the dinner is a natural transition. At the formal dinner wines often accompany the courses and, as already mentioned, liqueurs and cordials supply the final liquid note after the coffee. The theory of alcoholic beverages at the formal dinner is a simple one. ”

“ A rather popular drink at present is an equal mixture of white grape-juice and ginger ale with mint leaves and much ice. Those few who still have cellars, serve wines exactly as they used to, white wine, claret, sherry and Burgundy warm, champagne ice cold; and after dinner, green mint poured over crushed ice in little glasses, and other liqueurs of room temperature. Whiskey is always poured at the table over ice in a tall tumbler, each gentleman "saying when" by putting his hand out. ”

“ With their white and dimpled hands they play with a fan as cleverly as any woman, and when we have tasted different native drinks, flavored with essences of flowers, they bring up as a finish a bottle of Benedictine or Chartreuse, for they appreciate the liqueurs composed by their Western colleagues. ”

“ ON DIFFERENT LIQUEURS, RATAFIAS, AND ELIXIRS TAKEN AFTER COFFEE.
The name of liqueurs is given to preparations composed of spirits of wine, brandy, sugar, and the extracts of certain substances more or less aromatic. The desired result is obtained either by distillation or by infusion. Infused liqueurs are called ratafias. Elixirs are certain wholesome or therapeutic liquors, taken only by spoonfuls. Ratafias are as old as the time of Louis XII., contemporary with Henry VII. ”

“ If 'liquors' is here used in its generic sense, the other terms are superfluous. That they are present emphasizes the fact that the word is not so used.
Again, in one paragraph in this section we find this combination: 'Cordials, liquors, arrack, absynthe, kirschenwasser, ratafia, and other similar spirituous beverages or bitters, containing spirits.' Obviously the word 'liquors' here means liqueurs, that being the name of the kind of drinks of the same general nature as those specially mentioned. ”

“ To T. M. W.
(Air: Drink to me only.)
Drink to me only with thine eyes and I'll pledge thee with mine,
Leave but some coffee in thy cup and I'll not ask for wine.
A circuit dinner, as I know, doth ask a drink divine,
Yet would I scorn the mess champagne, could I get but that liquor of thine. ”

“ Hither small parties of men are continually repairing to “take a drink.” Perhaps they each choose a different kind of punch, or sling, or cocktail, requiring various combinations, in different proportions, of whisky, brandy, or gin, with sugar, bitters, peppermint, absinthe, curaçao, lemon-peel, mint, and what not; but the bar-keeper mixes them all as if by magic, when each man, taking his glass, and tipping those of all the rest as he mutters some sentiment, swallows the compound and wipes his moustache. ”

“ Dinner was substantial enough in all conscience, and the wine nearly as heavy as the food. Imagine quenching one's thirst with sherry in the dog-days! Yet so we did, till about half-way through dinner, and then, on great occasions, a dark-coloured rill of champagne began to trickle into the V-shaped glasses. At the epoch of cheese, port made its appearance in company with home-brewed beer; and, as soon as the ladies and the schoolboys departed, the men applied themselves, with much seriousness of purpose, to the consumption of claret which was really vinous. ”

“ And when ’tis night, and we have done, our master is more free, And stores us well with good strong beer, and pipes and tobaccee So we do sit and drink, we smoke, and sing and roar, Till we become more merry far than e’er we were before, When all our work is done, and all our sheep are shorn, Then home to our Captain, to drink the Ale that’s strong. ”

“ What immoderate drinking in every place! How they flock to the tavern! as if they were born to no other end but to eat and drink, as so many casks to hold wine; yea, worse than a cask, that marrs wine, and itself is not marred by it.... ‘Tis now come to that pass, that he is no gentleman, a very milk-sop, that will not drink, fit for no company.... ”

“ Much better than a mere cocktail. Thought of it in bed last night while I was sayin’ my prayers. This is one,” and he raised his condensed milk tin. “Cross between milk-punch, cocktail, high-ball, gin-sling, rum-shrub, and a bitters. . . . Go down to posterity as a ‘Gussie’—along with the John Collins and Elsie May. . . . Great thought. . . . Let us pause before it. . . .”
p. 165“What’s in it?” asked Captain Macke.
“Condensed milk,” replied Augustus, “ration lime-juice, ration rum, ration whisky, medical-comfort brandy, vermuth, coco-nut milk, angostura, absinthe, glycerine. . . .” ”

“ Ale, honest English ale, was the general drink, and wine was a luxury of the rich, as may be gathered from the old Anglo-Saxon dialogue, entitled Alfric’s Colloquy, in which a lad, on being asked what his drink is, replies, “Ale, if I have it, water, if I have it not.” To the question why he does not drink wine his answer is, “I am not so rich that I can buy me wine; and wine is not the drink of children or the weak-minded, but of the elders and the wise.” ”

“ The general design of the Plate Beer Street is to expose the deadly habit of gin-drinking, and to teach that if man must drink strong liquors, beer is far the best to indulge in.
Edward Young, courtier, poet, rector, a general genius, satirised tea and wine as abused by the women of his day. ”

“ The cool air sobered me, and my friend congratulated me on my recovery from a state of inebriety.
"After a little practice at the bar," said he—"it will take a good many tods to floor you. Let me give you a few hints as regards drinking. Never mix your liquor—always stick to one kind. After every glass, eat a cracker—or, what is better, a pickle. Plain drinks are always the best—far preferable to fancy drinks, which contain sugar, and lemons, and mint, and other trash; although a mixed drink may be taken on a stormy night, such as this has been. ”

“ Chemistry seems to agree with the temperance society, that wine, beer, brandy, gin, whiskey, and rum are alcohol and water, mixed in different proportions, and with some slight differences of flavoring and coloring matter. In all these drinks, teetotalers maintain, alcohol is power, the other ingredients being mere dilution and flavoring. Wine, they assure us, is alcohol and water flavored with grapes; beer is alcohol and water flavored with malt and hops; Bourbon whiskey is alcohol and water flavored with corn. ”

“ He who drinks small beer, goes to bed sober, Falls as the leaves do fall, that fall in October; He who drinks strong ale, goes to bed mellow, Lives as he ought to live, and dies a jolly fellow. Such was the love of strong ale in the sixteenth century that a term was actually invented to describe madness produced by excessive ale-drinking. ”

“ The immense variety of drinking-cups, as well as the intrinsic value of many of them, speaks volumes. He describes them as ‘some of elme, some of box, some of maple, some of holly, &c., mazers, broad-mouth’d dishes, moggins, whiskins, piggins, cruizes, ale-bowles, wassell-bowles, court-dishes, tankards, kannes, from a bottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. Other bottles we have of leather, but they are most used amongst the shepheards and harvest-people of the countrey ”

“ A curious extract may here be added as indicative of the fame of English ale amongst foreigners in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is taken from a work entitled “A Relation; or rather a true account of the Island of England, A.D. 1500, translated from the Italian by C. A. Sneyd.” “The deficiency of wine, however,” says our author, “is amply supplied by the abundance of ale and beer, to the use of which these people have become so habituated, that at an entertainment where there is plenty of wine, they will drink them in preference to it, and in great quantities. ”

“ If the stars drink champagne-cider out of tankards to the dregs, All the stars and little starlings with the garters on their legs, Shall an undiscovered cornet with a mile or two of tail Be put off with half a gallon of our humble home-brewed ale? ”

“ Sack, makes men from words Fall to drawing of swords, And quarrelling endeth their quaffing; Whilst dagger ale Barrels Beare off many quarrels And often turn chiding to laughing.
Sack’s drink for our masters, All may be Ale-tasters, Good things the more common the better, Sack’s but single broth, Ale’s meat, drinke, and cloathe, Say they that know never a letter. ”

“ Here’s a health to all brave Englishmen, that loves this cup of ale; Let every man fill up his can, and see that none do fail; ’Tis very good to nourish the blood, and make you sing with me, My ale was tunn’d when I was young, and a little above my knee. ”

“ If the wine does not give out, absent friends and popular causes, the cook in the kitchen and the butler in the pantry supply excellent excuses for a further riot of toasting. Conversation waxes louder and more excited with every glass. Eyes begin to shine with the moving spirit of alcohol. ”

“ A toast in beer or ale drives them into madness; and so to declaim against the absurd and ignorant customs of their own country, and thereupon digress into the commendation of drinking their wine refreshed with ice or snow. ”

“ The pungent and appetizing Cocktail is not for us, nor the enticing Rickey. Even the mild and genial Shandy-gaff must we shun, for it contains Beer, and the name of Beer is anathema in anything but negligible percentages. ”

“ As a matter of fact they seldom look on what we would call liquor at all, hardly ever getting a glympse of anything hard such as rye, scotch or gin, and a cocktail being practically a stranger and a repulsive one at that to them. ”

“ For our blyssd Lady sake, bring us in good ale,”
is a very old wassailing cry, and the wandering musicians always expected a black jack of ale and a Christmas pye. A favourite draught, also, was spiced ale with a toast, stirred up with a sprig of rosemary,—“Mark you, sir, a pot of ale consists of four parts: imprimis, the ale, the toast, the ginger, and the nutmeg.” Mead, or metheglin, was another national drink, and here the steward was only allowed as far as he could reach in the cask with the first joint of his middle finger. ”

“ When written history begins, all civilized and semi-civilized people, and many savages besides, are found drinking some sort of fermented liquor, wine, cider, or one of the many kinds of beer. Back of written history, tradition has it that the practice was from immemorial time. No people had handed down a story of an early past when such liquor was not an integral and familiar part of each day’s diet, usually with meals. ”

“ I wish I could write it in letters of fire over the door of every liquor saloon.
It may be the climate; it may be the high-pressure, fever-heated rate of modern living; it may as well be that those honest men who made their own apple whiskey and peach brandy, by their daily dram-drinking transmitted the taste which adulterated liquors, in the generation following, were to lash into uncontrollable appetite. ”

“ Even well into last century ale was a common drink for breakfast among those who affected the manners of the old school. Applebie’s Journal, under date September 11th, 1731, makes mention of “an old gentleman near ninety, who has a florid and vigorous constitution, and tells us the difference between the manners of the present age, and that in which he spent his youth. With regard to eating in his time, Breakfast consisted of good hams, cold sirloin, and good beer, succeeded with wholesome exercise, which sent them home hungry and ready for dinner.” ”

“ What Armstrong said one hundred and thirty years ago I entreat my medical brethren to believe now. I repeat it: if you want to prescribe spirits, do so; if you want to give wine, give pure wine. One bottle of good Burgundy will give twice the flavour and half the spirit that port does. [223]
In 1735 was published A Friendly Admonition to the Drinkers of Brandy and other Distilled Spirituous Liquors. The author laments that man has found means to extract from what God intended for his refreshment, a most pernicious and intoxicating liquor. ”