1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book

Port has a peculiar and romantic interest for all English-speaking people, since for over^'a hundred years, from the middle of the eighteenth until well past the middle of the nineteenth centuries, it was not only the best known wine in England, but it was the only wine that many highly conservative people would allow to appear upon their tables. It came, indeed, to be regarded, with Roast Beef, as being symbolic of English domestic life. There is a story told of a Warwickshire squire who, shortly after Queen Victoria's Coronation, found that a son of his had secretly introduced some bottles of Claret into the house. The squire, his face distorted with fury and contempt, impounded the bottles and poured their contents down the nearest convenient pig-sty, apostrophizing his son thus whilst doing so : " How dare ye bring these new-fangled foreign wines into my house ? Good honest English Port was good enough for my father and my grandfather, and it shall be good enough for my son ! " Which shows that a little ignorance is often a blessing in disguise.

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