The Wine Blokes

Much has been made of the war-time PM’s predilection for booze, but what exactly did Winston Churchill drink on those long mornings reading TOP SECRET documents in bed with the cat?

Over lunchtime meetings with politicians, military chiefs and family, Churchill would loyally drink Pol Roger -followed by brandy. He was supplied by shipments from Madame Odette Pol-Roger in Epernay . Churchill said of champagne:

In victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it… Champagne imparts a feeling of exhilaration; the nerves are braced: the imagination is agreeably stirred; the wits become more nimble.

After lunch he would retire for a nap while everyone else continued to work. Rising at late-afternoon, Churchill would revive himself with a whisky and soda. The next round of meetings would be followed by dinner with more champagne and brandy. His favourite brandy was vintage Hine -in 1915, he had written to his brother during a farm holiday that he had all the necessities in life: “Hot baths, cold Champagne, new peas and old brandy.”

However, his soldier’s training had left him wary of drunkeness and thus there is ‘no credible testimony of Churchill’s being drunk, in the falling-down slurred-words sense, while he was Prime Minister’ (Kimball, Forged in War, 22). Indeed, Churchill himself said of his relationship with alcohol:

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.