The life of a Queen involves a serious amount of wine consumption, as you might imagine. But the Queen Mother took it to a whole ‘nother level. Major Colin Burgess was the Queen Mother’s “fixer,” and he recalls her drinking habits in the Daily Mail:
“What was memorable was her fondness for red wine,” he writes, “particularly heavy clarets, which she loved.”
In their first meeting Burgess says they must have made their way through a bottle- and-a-half. “Following my appointment, I discovered the Queen Mother’s pattern of drinking rarely varied,” he went on. “At noon, she had her first drink of the day — a potent mix of two parts of the fortified wine Dubonnet to one part of gin. This was followed by red wine with lunch and, very occasionally, a glass of port to end it. Later came the ritual observed at 6pm, deemed the earliest acceptable time for an evening drink. ‘Colin, are we at the magic hour?’ the Queen Mother would invariably ask, and I’d mix her a Martini. After a couple of these, she would sit down to dinner and drink one or two glasses of pink champagne.”
Major Burgess explains that she was nowhere near being an alcoholic, though she did enjoy to sip on red wine socially — and don’t we all? He concludes that life for the Queen Mother “followed a sedate routine, revolving largely around lunch and rather a lot of booze.”
To that, we simply say, yas queen.
