Evening Star Newspaper, December 28, 1930, Page 72

16 THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 28, 1980. SEEING OLD YEAR OUT IN WET ENGLAND - A British Writer Who Has Spent Several Christmases in the United States Gives Here an Intimate Disclosure of How Holiday Drinking Is Done on John Bull’s Sober Isle. BY DAVID L. BLUMENFELD. LONDON. HRISTMAS cheer spells Christmas beer—so runs an old adage, coimed, they say, in the good old days of Henry VIII—and the whole -of Eng- 5 land, led by London, which is de- ‘cidedly red-nosed at the moment, what with ‘Dscember winds and old tawny port after office ““hours, has just finished laying in its holiday ‘stock of cheer. The windcw displays in the wine and spirit shops this year are more astonishing in their varieties of drinkables than ever before. Right opposite my apartment is the store of one William Burney, who describes himself as a *Wholesale Wine and Spirit Merchant, licensed to sell intoxicating liquors, to be drunk off the premises.” ’ “His window is a blaze of electric lamps, shin- ing on imitation snow and ice. Lying on the ‘snow are sledges piled high with every drink you can imagine. There are bottles of very old brandy which you may buy for the price of a bottle of inferior bootleg gin, graceful Hock bottles with their long stems, jolly, fat Hollands, clarets, Burgundys, Bordeaux, bottles of Scotch and bottles of Irish, and in a sledge all to themselves the succulent, insidious “French liqueurs so dear to women and so cheap 1o buy. - Here is a flagon of Benedictine—you ecan buy it for what you would expend on a couple of good neckties. Here too is peach brandy and ctreme de menthe, next a trfo of bottles con- taining Chartreuse, Grand Marnier, and Coin- treau, while at one end of the display Santa Claus is loaded to the white and bushy eye- brows with kuemmel, white port, Gordon’s gin —the real, not the synthetic—Rhine wine, vodka, and a sack over his shoulder from the neck of which peep the golden tops of bottles plane is unloading little leather grips contain- ing bottles of whisky, port, brandy, liqueurs and champagne, - which you buy for a few dollars and give away as presenis to your friends. AT wine store is one among thousands, and all'of them will be completely devoid of stock by the New Year. From which you would think that London was going on the most appalling bat this Christmas, and that every member of every household old enough to lift a glass would be in a beautiful state of inebriation from the day before Christmas until the last of the Old Year. but most dignified it absorbs, absorbs again, and then comes back for a final nightcap. ANl of which means that here in England people know how to handle their s In the first place it “isn’t done” and In the second they know what is good for their diges- tion. Consequently people get less drunk. They may get mellow often, but drunk very seldom. There are traditions to British drinking. “If,” you will hear it said, “a man cannot hold his liquor well”—“carry”—it is, I believe, the cor- rect term—“then he had best not drink at This rule is generally observed. 'HERE is no need to get drunk over You never hear of people deliberately out to get intoxicated. Liquor is cheap are parties going on all over the probably just as much liquor at those over.- your side—save that it is liquor here—at which drinking steadily but quietly without much out; of whoopee. You will see very few “drunks” the streets, the “pubs” will do & roaring as a matter of course, but even there, beyond a louder-than-usual buzz of conversation, you dinner parties at which a few choice wines ease and d—‘“mbne.ddwy.mdflnkmuehumfl- y.” Much of the drinking takes place, of course, g A Testing the New Year cheer that comes out of a spigot. Beer tasters, dignified business men, in a drinking competition to test quality. The interior of an English “pub,” of which there are more than 125,000. The barmaid is drawing “half a pint of bitter.” It is all quite respectable, not to say sedate, in “Merrie England.” much about his He takes it as a matter of course unless hobby of wines. But the average cellar is sufficiently well stocked to warrant the production on request of any wine or spirit other than the most expensive vintages and years. ‘The British cellar is situated generally below ground level, is stone floored, stone walled and lighted only in the most modern homes by elec- . The great majority are lit by hanging lamp or by the lighted candle with which the proud owner descends before dinner in order to bring up in person the wines which are to drunk. All, whether lit by artificial light or by other means, are of necessity dry, for & damp cellar begets mildew, dry rot and the micro-organisms which attack the corks in the necks of the bottles and so spoil the wine. They are free l!de-nmg an the Today they are performed generally by the master of the house, who, if he is anything of an enthusiast, will duly keep the temperature around 53 to 58 degrees Fahrenheit and do his vibration. He will keep the , for wine is not improved all his purchases in the the name of the merchant, date on which it was “laid tion of the wine at the time BIG cellar in the old days gave the cellar- man more than enough to do, and today even a small cellar needs plenty of attention. The smallest in an apartment can take up a few hours of each week in attention repaid in thousands of British time. Port, for instance, is half bottles, for once a bottle is opened it loses half its bouquet if it is recorked. They put their wine most carefully into its the white “splash” mark yet not allowing the cork end to touch the wall of the cellar, and arrange . new wine and the older at without disturbing other y wine merchants in are sending out spe- ” the wine in cellars people do not realize people employed in the wine and the other great cities No less than 18,000,000 in England each year and this necessitates & organization to deal with reception, treatment, care and distribution. in addition to that some 4,000,000 gallons were landed this year in Eng- almost prohibitive weight of for the export trade in the rare vintages and spirits of PFrance, Portugal, Italy, and Germany is principally controlled by the famous wine houses of London. 3 France sends bordeaux, burgundies, brandy, vermouth, champagne and liqueurs; Spain sends sherries and tarragonas; Portugal her ports; Italy chianti, vermouth and asti; Hole land—home of the old square-face—contributes her gin; Germany sends the sun-kissed wines of the Rhine, and the West Indies and Natal the hot, flery rum—so welcome in the trenches at the dawn “stand to,” and all of this hetero=- geneous mass of alcohol arrives and is unloaded the quaysides of the London Docks, under trol of the Port of London Authority. greater of it arrives in bulk, bottles, in great casks of all shapes and rom the giant hogshead to the even larger * of massive construction. n as the stuff is landed it comes under of the customs officers, who see it into warehouses” to await redistribution Here in giant vaults the wiges its are nursed by a large staff of ex- subjected to all the care and treat- necessary to their welfare during their the warehouses. tion to the bonded warehouses are the wine and spirit vaults of the Port of London, built in the early nineteenth cen- tury by Rennie, the great drchitect. It is here that England’s most famous wine merchants mature their wines and brandies for years be- fore they are sent out for consumption by the public, BERETRE, 2figee 5'§é§§§§' 31 i - i j