Drinking on the benches

Spectator, The, Mar 18, 2000 by Simon, Sion

His drinking habits were admirably fetishistic - preferably Pol Roger, served at precisely the right temperature (he was delighted when the gift of a refrigerator from Beaverbrook in 1926 obviated the need to dilute it with ice) and interspersed with much brandy and port. The papers of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's lend-lease administrator, contain several good examples of the war leader's zealous interest in his own consumption. For instance, Hopkins describes finding Churchill in January 1943 'in bed in his customary pink robe, and having, of all things, a bottle of wine for breakfast'. Viscount Alanbrooke made the same observation, and Eden's diary mentions Churchill taking a 'stiff whiskey and soda, at 8.45 a.m'. A Foreign Office official described a dinner with Churchill as ,a varied and noble procession of wines with which I could not keep pace - champagne, port, brandy, Cointreau: Winston drank a good deal of all, and ended with two glasses of whisky and soda.'

I doubt that Churchill would have agreed with Alan Clark's absurd boast (more than ten years ago) that you couldn't get a decent bottle of claret for less than 100. For one thing, Churchill was much posher, and therefore less prone to self-parodic snobbery. But, for another, he was enough of a boozer to know the truth about wine: that the taste is a very ancillary part of the point.

Sion Simon writes a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph.