As the Entire World gears up to celebrate Her Maj’s 96 years on the throne [is this right? Ed] by drinking themselves insensible and eating carbonised sausages, Fake Booze would like to pay its own tribute to the ‘Platty Joobs’ by looking back at some of the drinks milestones of her two thousand year reign.
1953 – The crown cap is invented two months after Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, and is named after her tiara.
1956 – Sociologists herald a ‘new era of equality’ following the shock revelation that a middle class British person has bought a bottle of Liebfraumilch for the first time. Thirteen old school wine merchants go bust overnight.
1960 – Prince Philip offends a group of Jewish religious leaders when he asks them whether they celebrate Passover with Oy Vay Cuvée.
1967 – Following another difficult vintage in Bordeaux The Beatles have a smash hit with the album ‘Pungent Peppers – let’s get Graves Cab banned’. The world’s most ambitious drinks protest album ever, it’s credited with getting the Bordelaise to rethink viticulture.
1977 – The Silver Jubilee, and a supermarket launches a sweet, fizzy strawberry drink, Jubilade* in the monarch’s honour. A bottle is accidentally included in Wine Spectator’s one year anniversary rosé tasting, where it takes first place.
1982 – Dubonnet reveals that 95% of its UK sales take place in two locations: Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. Echoing a famous quote from the Falklands War, the brand manager says he ‘counts the bottles out each week and counts the empties back.’
1986 – On a trip to eastern France, Prince Philip causes a scandal when he asks a group of Jura winemakers whether they ‘sell all their vins jaunes to the Chinese’.
1997 – Pol Roger release a special cuvée to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Wedding, named after ‘the inspirational way in which the couple bring life-giving succour to the country’. However ‘Philip and Elizabeth’s Golden Shower’ is hastily withdrawn following an ‘artistic mix-up’ concerning an image on the bottle’s label, which critics said ‘took the piss’.
2010 – Prince Andrew finds himself in hot water after being accused of helping to create an underage ‘scotch’. He tells police there was no way he could have known Paedo’s Glen didn’t comply with the rules, had never been to Scotland and that pictures of him wearing a kilt in Edinburgh castle were ‘fabricated’, and even if he had he didn’t like Scotch in the first place because it made him sweat, even though he couldn’t. Fortunately the controversy is solved with a large bag of cash.
2014 – To celebrate Prince Edward’s 50th birthday, the queen commissions a drinks producer to create a brand with ‘no discernible taste, personality or purpose whatsoever’. ‘Last in Line’ is widely credited with kickstarting the hard seltzer phenomenon.
2018 – Prince Philip’s Caribbean tour comes to a sudden end following ‘misunderstood comments’ that he made concerning the provenance, history and target audience of Mount Gay rum.
2020 – Moët & Chandon are accused of insensitivity, after creating a special Champagne to commemorate Harry and Meghan going to live in the US. Their decision to produce only quarter bottle-sizes – known as a ‘split’** – was, they said, ‘just a coincidence and not a reflection of the fact that your stupid English Royal family has just ripped itself apart in the full gaze of the world’s media.’
2022 – In the wake of Pommery Pop and Moët Ice, Pol Roger launch a ‘modern Britain’ cuvée for young millennials to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee. Metropolitan Pol Ice is bottled in an imperial pint and is described by critics as ‘aggressively old-school’, ‘morally bankrupt’ and ‘the perfect symbol of modern Britain’.
*Jubilade actually happened.
**this bottle-size info is true. Fake Booze at its educational best.
Click here to read about the queen’s launch of her ‘Liz’s Fizz’ sparkling wine, and here to read about the ‘Her Maj’ range of drinks.
