British Drink
British drinking culture has
always been led by beer. Ale has been plentiful (on tap you might say) for
centuries, and the traditions of the pub have fostered its enduring popularity.
While wine has a similarly venerable relationship with the nation, the masses
have really only been quaffing since the 1950s. These days Britain imports more
wine (by value) than anywhere else in the world (partly because it still
struggles to produce its own) and you’re almost as likely to see it consumed in
homes and pubs as beer. Away from the demon drink, Britain cuddles the teapot
like a life support system, resorting to a cuppa at the merest excuse.
1. Bitter Sweet
The Romans probably introduced
brewing to Britain but it was the Middle Age monks that monopolised early beer
production. They added hops to the mix, developing the taste that diverges from
the norm in most beer-drinking countries. Brits brew bitter; they haven’t
traditionally made much lager (even while the effervescent amber stuff, brewed
in Britain with foreign recipes and names, is consumed with relish). Bitter
uses the same basic ingredients as lager, albeit with darker malts, but is
fermented at a higher temperature using different yeasts. Varying quantities of
hops are added to modify the flavour. The common bitter of today, usually
served flat and at cellar temperature, is a descendant of pale ale, a light
version of the old strong British beer, created in the 19th century to keep
colonial types cool in the Raj. Scottish bitter drinkers still sometimes ask
for a pint of ‘heavy’, a term of old used to distinguish from a pint of ‘light’
(mild). In Northern Ireland, Guinness, as you might expect, is more popular
than elsewhere in the UK; although the dry stout isn’t brewed in the province
itself but to the south, in Dublin.
2. The Wine
The Brits and their wine; Wine
drinking has been part of British culture for centuries. Romans and monks
maintained a homegrown industry but the good stuff was always imported from
France. Henry II’s marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152 established a trade
route from Bordeaux that saw Britain become the main beneficiary of claret for
the next 300 years. When the Hundred Years War and high taxes severed
relations, taste buds were retrained toward Iberian sherry, Madeira and port.
The taste for European wines re-emerged in the 19th century but was confined
predominantly to the middle or upper classes until the later 20th century when
French, German, Italian and, in the 1990s, unpretentious New World wines found
their way into bars, pubs and supermarkets. Britain’s similarly long
relationship with champagne is also in rude health; more is imported today
(about 40 million bottles a year) than ever before. Only the French drink more.
On the home front, English and
Welsh wine (Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t get involved) was something of
a joke 20 years ago. However, while the climate remains a shade too damp and
cold to have a sizeable wine industry, the native talent for producing light,
aromatic whites has improved significantly. Vineyards are scattered throughout
southern England, with the highest concentration in Kent and Sussex. There are
more than 350 making saleable wine: the largest, Denbies Wine Estate on the
Surrey Downs, has over 250 acres under vine but most average a couple of acres
at most. In common they tend to grow Müller-Thurgau, Seyval Blanc, Bacchus or
Reichensteiner grapes. English Wine Week at the end of May celebrates the
growing tradition.
3. Whisky
Uisge beatha, the ‘water of life’
as the Gaels call it, has been made in the Scottish Highlands and Ulster since
at least the 15th century. These days sales at home and abroad are huge, with
Scotch whisky contributing some £100 million to the Exchequer each year. Of the
two main varieties, single malts come from a specific distillery and are made
solely with malted barley, while blended whisky is created from a mixture of
single malt and grain whisky (produced using malted and unmalted cereals) and
may come from more than one distillery. Various factors determine a whisky’s
character: the quality of the water, type of malted barley, amount of peat used
in drying the grain, type of wooden barrel used for maturation, length of
maturation – all will affect the taste and ‘nose’, which can range from deep,
pungent and smoky to light, gentle and sweet. Scotland harbours over a hundred
distilleries, almost half secreted in the Speyside whisky heartland of the
north east. Elsewhere in Scotland Islay, Orkney and the Campbeltown peninsula
also produce distinguished malts. Northern Ireland retains only one distillery,
Bushmills, but it does claim to be the oldest in the world, having received its
licence from King James I in 1608.
4. A taste for gin
British troops fell for a
juniper-flavoured spirit while fighting in the Netherlands in the 1580s and
brought ‘Dutch courage’ back to England where it was put on sale in chemists.
By 1720 a quarter of households in London were distilling their own gin and
drunkenness, particularly amongst the poor, had become a serious problem. ‘Drunk
for a penny, dead drunk for two pence’ said the engraving above a gin store in
Hogarth’s print, Gin Lane (1751). Others called it ‘mother’s ruin’. One cattle
drover reputedly sold his 11-year-old daughter for a gallon of the bad stuff,
while ‘gin palaces’ amounted to furniture-less drinking factories. Gin’s
reputation climbed in the mid 1800s with the introduction of a less rough
version, dry gin. It later became known as London Dry, named by association
with the capital. British gin tends to be higher proof than European or
American versions and has the distinction of dried lemon and citrus peel in its
mix of botanicals.
5. Cider and Perry
England, notably its southern,
East Anglian and West Country patches, has been making cider since Roman times.
Medieval monasteries kept their coffers stocked by selling spiced cider to a
thirsty public and by the mid 17th century almost every farm had its own
orchard and cider press. Farm labourers would even receive part of their wages
in cider. In the later 20th century cider production became a more industrial
affair, generating the gassy, clear, concentrate version sold in pubs around
Britain. However, traditional cider – the flat, cloudy sort to which varying
apple varieties and blends bring subtly different flavours – is enjoying a
revival. Today, no one drinks more cider per head than the British. Perry is
the pale gold coloured pear cousin of cider, made in the SouthWest for
centuries using a similar method to cider, albeit with the addition of a
secondary fermentation.
6. Tea and coffee
The common cup of tea (a basic
black tea) is a British institution – a daily, often hourly, ritual for
millions. Taken with a splash of milk, it’s the nation’s favourite drink. The
Chinese have been knocking the stuff back for 5,000 years but tea didn’t hit
British shores until the mid 17th century, made fashionable by Catherine of
Braganza, the tea-mad Portuguese wife of Charles II. The drink really took off
when the East India Company began importing tea from China, before Britain
introduced tea cultivation to India, Ceylon and Kenya in the 1830s. Coffee
appeared in Britain at a similar time to tea but its fortunes have been less
consistent. Like tea, coffee carries its own social and cultural weight, even
while it is, perhaps, silently adjudged less ‘British’ than tea because of its
popularity in the rest of Europe. The first coffee house opened in Oxford in
1650 and the coffee shop or bar has been an important social unifier ever
since, somehow more bohemian than the humble tearoom. In recent years the
unstoppable rise of international coffee house chains has – depending on your
worldview – broadened or narrowed choice. Today Brits drink about twice as much
tea (165 million cups a day) as they do coffee, although the gap narrows every
year.
