Some cocktails warm the blood.
Some stimulate the brain. Others are meant to stimulate the mind.
Take the royals’ favourite rocket fuel that is Gordon’s Gin (with an alcohol content of 37.5 per cent), Dubonnet (a wine-based aperitif flavoured with herbs and an alcohol content of 14.8 per cent), ice, a slice and, please, please, no dreary old mixer.
The Queen Mother was a huge fan —often confiding she couldn’t possibly navigate her endless engagements ‘without a little something’.
Dubonnet, which was created to prevent French legionnaires from contracting malaria, pepped up two Queen Elizabeths and served as their pre-prandial sharpener
Perhaps not.
One time she wrote a note to her favourite page Billy Tallon while describing arrangements for a royal lunch.
‘I think,’ it said, ‘that I will take 2 small bottles of Dubonnet and Gin with me this morning, in case it is needed.’
It was, no doubt.
She is also an avid fan of golf. Until recently (when she decided to take a temporary break from alcohol), Her Majesty would enjoy not one, but two of these ‘heart-starters’ before lunch every day. She saved her evening glass of champagne. The ‘jolt’ from just one is enough to send most of us giddy.
So perhaps the only surprising thing about the news that Dubonnet is finally to be awarded a coveted Royal Warrant — which allows bottles to carry the label ‘By Appointment to HM The Queen’ with a crest — is that it has taken so very long. (Gordon’s gin has had its since 1925.)
This is not surprising, as sales have been strong for years, but it was thought that only the Royals drank the wine.
Every day, rain or shine — in Buckingham Palace, Balmoral, shooting lodges, in headscarves, Barbour jackets and crown jewels — they have diligently worked their way through an impressive proportion of the 500,000 bottles sold each year.
Cheers! Cheers!
One Sandringham Christmas, the Queen, Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother so embraced their favourite concoction — ripping through nearly a whole bottle of gin and Dubonnet before dinner — that the very petite Queen Mother totally missed her plate when helping herself to veggies, collapsed in a fit of giggles, and the whole table followed suit.
So what on earth is Dubonnet, why are the royals so mad for it, and why aren’t the rest of us drinking it in similar quantities?
For starters, there’s the very particular taste. Aficionados rave about its ‘light fruitiness with notes of woody spice, blackberry and chocolate’, which has helped push sales up by more than 30 per cent in recent years.
Experts eulogise about it being ‘woody and tannic’. Many people love quinine’s bitter taste. Others don’t. It’s a surprise hit in Colombia but many here find it too sweet.
Dubonnet, which was an alcohol-based health tonic, was not created by accident. It all started in the late 1830s, when French Foreign Legionnaires were despatched to malaria-ridden corners of North Africa, and quinine — the active ingredient in cinchona bark used to prevent the disease — tasted so revolting they refused it, so the French government launched an appeal for a solution.
Parisian chemist Joseph Dubonnet responded in 1846 with ‘quinquina Dubonnet’ — adding quinine, herbs and spices to fortified wine — and the troops loved it. They loved it so much that they continued to drink it when they returned home.
Her Majesty would enjoy not one, but two of these ‘heart-starters’ before lunch every day (saving her daily glass of champagne for the evening)
By 1900s, it was the ‘aperitif du jour’ in France’s cafes and bars.
How to make Dubonnet from gin
It is not something to be drunk in a glass.
The bottom is up Royal Warrant for the royal rocket fuel
Ideally, it should be handed over by a liveried page, after being created by Robert Large, Yeoman of the Cellars — who has had an awful lot of practice and has a very strict etiquette for making a drink worthy of the Queen.
Robert always starts with a highly polished EIIR glass, into which he pours one part gin, to two parts Dubonnet, to ‘just under the ER’, a slice of lemon — ‘any pips carefully removed.
She doesn’t want a pip to top the glass. . . and to swallow that!’ Finally, two perfectly square ice cubes, resting on top of the lemon.
Don’t risk a second on an empty stomach unless you too have been drinking them all your life.
It soon crossed the Channel, where it was later embraced by the Queen Mother — who took it rather stronger than her daughter; in equal parts with gin, not always bothering with ice and never, ever, with a mixer. Dubonnet, for Royals is their mixer. — as Tony Blair once learned to his peril at Balmoral, there’s little the Queen likes more than a very strong cocktail.)
The drink became a staple of any middle-class drinks table, particularly among those who holidayed in France and who never used it to make a ‘Gin and It’ (purists insist that should use a sweet Italian vermouth, not Dubonnet).
Dubonnet’s heyday came in the Seventies, when it was bought by Pernod Ricard. Pia Zadora, an actress who played the Dubonnet Girl in several sexy TV ads, was suddenly the Dubonnet girl. Worldwide sales reached 20 million bottles per year.
Fashions change, but Dubonnet’s brief time of fame was overshadowed by the House of Windsor.
A low point came in 2009 when, during a visit to Lord’s Cricket Ground, the Queen requested her favourite tipple while watching England’s bowlers rout Australia.
Shock horror, not only did not one of the cricket ground’s dozen or so bars stock Dubonnet, the only bottle in the official cellar was apparently ‘out of condition’.
The owner of the local off-licence claimed that Dubonnet has not been requested in thirty years.
Her Majesty’s butler tracked down a bottle in a supermarket but was barred by security from bringing it in until the chief executive’s officials intervened.
After all that, it wouldn’t have just been the Queen needing a stiff gin and Dubonnet, or several.
Not that many of us would have been able to accommodate two — at least not without the need for an urgent lie down afterwards.
But, of course, the Queen and her late mother couldn’t have looked better on their daily doses. Maybe all the herbs and spices really do help.
One thing is certain, as they celebrate their Royal Warrant, the producers of Dubonnet will hope Her Majesty’s abstinence is not permanent. And, praying that, for all our sakes, she gets back on it — the quicker the better.