Drinking like Phileas Fogg in 1873

I just finished reading "Around the World in 80 Days", which I've read more times than I can count, and I always discover new things that make me ponder about the world that Phileas Fogg, the main character, lived in, in 1873. He is described as not only rich, but cultured and refined. He belongs to a very elegant club in London, called the Reform Club, and here is a description of what he drank there:

"...sherry, his port, and his cinnamon-spiced claret; while his beverages were refreshingly cooled with ice, brought at great cost from the American lakes."

My knowledge of alcoholic beverages is very limited. In a long life I've mostly drunk beer, and occasionally gin and whiskey. I'm fond of my glass of red wine (one glass - 7 ounces) every night with my cheese and crackers before bed (recommended by doctors for, ahem, people "of age" like me), but I'm going to have to Google Phileas Fogg's drinks. I'm pretty sure that they're all types of wine, but if you'll bear with me here I'll look them up. Here ya go:

Sherry: a fortified wine originally and mainly from southern Spain, often drunk as an aperitif.

An aperitif (yeah, I looked that up, too!) is an alcoholic drink taken before a meal to stimulate the appetite.

So Fogg would have had a good shot of alcohol before dinner, if I'm reading this correctly, stronger than the wine that I drink out of a box from Walmart.

Here's port:

a Portuguese fortified wine

Also a strong wine, which I guess he would have with his dessert. And then there's his cinnamon-spiced claret, which is a red wine. I wonder what wine connoisseurs nowadays would think about spicing their claret with cinnamon? I like cinnamon in my coffee, can't imagine it in my wine.

But if you're a wine expert maybe you can answer this: did he drink them chilled (it says "refreshingly cooled with ice")? I can't imagine pouring wine over ice, and speaking for myself I drink my red wine at room temperature, which is how I like it. I suppose it all depends on taste!

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more