Sir Winston Churchill, knownk for the quote “I have taken more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me”, had certainly no fear of the strong stuff, so much that White House staff during Roosevelt’s administration coined a special term for Churchill visits: “Winston Hours.” Basically, during this time the president and prime minister would drink until late night, and reportedly Roosevelt needed to sleep for 10 hours a night for three nights to recover from “Winston Hours.”
Once, when asked how much gin he wanted in his cocktail (by the way, he favoured Plymouth Gin), he replied: “I would like to observe the vermouth from across the room while I drink my martini.” The Churchill version of our cocktail is little more than chilled gin, sometimes accompanied by “a sly bow in the direction of France, in lieu of any of the nation’s distracting liqueurs”.
Among the many alcoholic anecdotes about Churchill, my favorite concerns Lady Astor, the first woman to sit in the British Parliament, who told him in 1946, “You’re drunk, Winston!”. He politely replied “And you’re ugly, Lady Astor, but I’ll wake up sober tomorrow morning.” At which the Viscountess, furiously, doubled down: “If you were my husband, I’d put poison in your coffee!” only to be told, “Nancy, if you were my wife, I’d drink that coffee.”
To be fair, even though for some reason Churchill’s reputation as a Martini drinker is firmly entrenched in the collective imagination, recent research has shown that he wasn’t particularly fond of gin, so much so that he poured a martini prepared by Roosevelt into a flowerpot in the White House. In any case, Churchill died at ninety-one.
The Martini Hour 