Wine, the vine and the cellar / [Thomas George Shaw].

  • Shaw, Thomas George.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wine, the vine and the cellar / [Thomas George Shaw]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    streets in stoups. Scott and others, describing the Scotch in old times, often allude to the ‘ stoup of claret,’ which was probably the usual way of buying and also of drinking it: but it could not have been a ‘ vin de Bordeaux ’ from the Medoc ; for this, as it is now sent, will not bear such rough usage without becoming soon undrinkable. Being so common and plentiful, we may be sure that it was new, strong, and cheap, and rarely bottled. We can understand the gentry, the inhabitants of the towns and the Lowlands drinking wine, but can scarcely imagine that it would be necessary for the Scotch Privy Council in the beginning of the seven- teenth century to pass Acts to prevent ‘ the excess of drinking of wines in the Isles ’ (the Hebrides, or continent adjacent). These were, then, in a state of greater poverty than any other parts of Scotland, and what they drank as claret must have been grown up the river above Bordeaux, probably in the Clairette district. In 1609 the introduction of wine into the Isles from the mainland was forbidden. In 1616 its use wms forbidden. In 1622, finding that ‘ a great quantity of wines is yearly carried to the Isles, with the insatiable desire whereof the inhabitants are so far possessed that, when there arrives any ship or other vessel there, they spend both days and nights in their excess of drinkins, and seldom do they leave their drinking so long as there is any of the wine remaining,’ its sale by any person wdiatever was finally prohibited.