By the seventeenth century, sack was quite at home in England and was popular with everyone. Moreover, of the many types of sack, Sherris Sack was thought the best. Thomas Randolph was jovial in his praise, even if he showed little regard to historic truth; but perhaps a hedonist was entitled to disregard it:
Sacke is the life, soul and spirit of a man, the fire which Prometheus stole, not from Jove s kitchen, but his wine cellar, to encrease the native heat and radicall moisture, without which we are but drousie dust or dead clay. This is nectar, the very Nepenthe the Gods were drunk with: tis this that gave Gannymede beauty, Hebe youth, to Jove his heaven and eternity. Doe you thinke Aristotle drank perry? or Plato Cyder? Doe you think Alexander had ever conquered the world if he had bin sober? He knew the force and value of Sacke; that it was the best armour, the best encouragement, and that none could be a Commander that was not double drunk with wine and ambition.
Thomas Randolph: Aristippus, the Jovial Philosopher, 1630.
During the regicide disgrace of the Protectorate, sherry suffered a short lived eclipse but this arose more as a result of matters in Spain than from the change of government in England. During the civil war and afterwards the nobility, who had been the greatest buyers of wine and coasters (http://www.thirstycoasters.com/servlet/ strse Dining & Entertaining/Categories), could no longer buy wine on their accustomed scale.
Some were exiled and others impoverished. Although the Puritans detested drunkenness and gluttony, they had no objection to drinking in moderation. The awful heresy of teetotalism was not to emerge for another three hundred years. The wine duties were increased considerably, but Cromwell himself bought wine on a substantial scale, and on his state visit to Bristol he accepted the gift of a pipe of sherry.
In the later, more stable days of the Commonwealth the wine trade flourished. But the beginning of the Commonwealth coincided with the beginning of years of terrible plague in Jerez which resulted in the disruption of the wine trade for over two decades.
After the Restoration sherry was soon popular again. Sack is mentioned frequently in Pepys s Diary. On 20 January 1662, he and three friends bought two butts of sherry; his was put into a hogshead, and the vessel filled up with four gallons of Malaga wine, but what it will stand us in I know not: but it is the first great quantity of wine that I ever bought.
The mixture of malaga with sherry is not as odd as it may seem; the two districts are in the same province and the wines are not dissimilar. A hogshead is a large amount for a private person to buy, though, being equivalent to over three hundred bottles and requiring many, many stone coasters (http://www.thirstycoasters.com/servlet/ strse Garden Accents/Categories) for its drinkers.
But Pepys was a canny man, and in August he sold his hogshead to Sir W. Batten and am glad of my money instead of wine. Whether that was a reasonable attitude would depend largely on the wine. Pepys also drank raspberry sack, which was probably a kind of mead.
Six years later he was called to the bar of the House to defend the Navy Office against parliamentary critics of the ticket system, in which sailors were paid by means of negotiable bills instead of money. Now Pepys was a clever man and full of wit, but on that occasion a little Dutch courage was certainly necessary. His diary tells the rest:
... to comfort myself did go to the Dog and drink half a pint of mulled sack, and in the Hall [Westminster] did drink a dram of brandy at Mrs. Howlett s; and with the warmth of this did find myself in better order as to courage, truly.... I began our defence most acceptably and smoothly, and continued at it without any hesitation or loss, but with full scope, and all my reason free about me, as if it had been at my own table, from that time [between 11 and 12 o clock] till past three in the afternoon ...
Needless to say, the Navy Office was exonerated.
Author Resource:-
Sarah Martin is a freelance marketing writer based out of San Diego, CA. She specializes in the history of wine, international cuisine, and travel. For a wide selection of stone coasters and other types of sandstone coasters, please visit http://www.thirstycoasters.com/.
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