Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1885-02-08
WINE DRINKING IN NEW YORK.
Morning Drinks Out OF Fashion-The Great
Popularity of Champagne.

Oi luOlOlnR mucn Durguuuy. n5 OiOuu
mouStsche eurled naturally at the ends and
he looked eomplacent and comfortable. A
thousand duplicates Of the mar may be
seen in the popular clubs, in the hotels, at
the opera. and on Wall street any day. He
was an admirable type of the everyday New
Yorker of easy circumstances
Drinking" he said, among men about
town, club men, brokers and business men
is not what it Was ten years sgo by any
means. Within few years the custom oil
drinking in the middle of the day down
town has been reduced enormously, and the
number of men who now make it a cast
iron rule not to drink before dinner time
is larger than is supposed. | used to drink
at all hours of the day, a cocktail be-
fore breakfast to kill time, and from that
on until night | swallowed everything that
came in my way. Very often down town,
when | first became q member of the
Board, the boys used 10 ask me out at all
times, and l reciproested The result
vas that at 3 o'clock In the afternoon
/ usually felt about fourteen feet high
and forgot the worries and cares Of the day
from the flowing mug. Then four or FIVE
Of US started up town to get rid of the
fumes and have an appetite for dinner, with
the usual result. WhenI got to the club |
was usually half seas over, and | was not
able to eat anything, and the rest Of the
night was spent in an ambitious effort to
make Rome howl
IL kept this up for several years, and
then | began to discover it was bad form.
Then | stopped it. The fact that it was
sure d,ath, that it spoiled my business pros
poets aud that it ruined my reputation had
not half the effect on me that the simple
discovery that it was not the proper thing
to do did. noticed that all the swells on
the street, BY which | mean the men who
rushed coaches up and down the ave-
nue., made it a rule never to drink before
dinner time. After q struggle l, too,
adopted that plan, and I've congratulated
myself on it ever since. If | drank In the
middle Of the dsy-oi course there are
mani occasions when a man must walk up
to a bar or else appear churlish or i'll nat
ured-I use simple Rhine wine and seltzer
or a thimble Of sherry, which is compare
lively harmless Then q man gets up town
in some sort Of shape.
New York men don't drink wine in the
day time, that is, before luncheon. There
are occasional wrecks-men who habitually
stay GU sl night, and who come to break,
fast without any appetite in the morning
who drink a pint Of ChabliS for breakfast.
Il is light wine, which sort Of tones them up,
but to the majority o! men nothing is ore
pulsive as wine in the morning. Breakfast
in New York is q more important meal
than it is in any other great city that
l have visited, and, BY the way |
have been nearly everywhere. In England
breakfast is a sort of a happy-golucky meal
in the country houses. 1t is composed of
meat, rarely with vegetables, aud always Of
The table is laid, and We can 60
down to breakfast whenever we choose, but
the breakfast, though substantial, IS seldom
inviting. In Paris, breakfast consists Of
coffee and rolls. | mean, OF course the
every day breakfast Of ordinary people. The
elaborate breakfast is at noon, or l or z
and consists Of many courses there,
Just as it does here, and light wines are
in order; but you can put it down for a sol
id fact that New Workers do not touch
wines at breakfast. As for luncheon, inst
meal is in general such a hurried one to
New Workers that the idea of wine never
presents itself. But even men Of leisure
with lunch at their clubs at | or 2 o'clock
seldom bother with wine, unless the weather
happens to be very hot, when they perhaps
have q pint of frozen champagne. Down
town the scheme is to get nd o~fluncheon as
o as possible, and the custom is to eat
without wine. When any of my clerks take
~out-oftoWn customer to luncheon, BY
wsy Of showing hun a little attention, a
bottle or two Of wine IS opened, but that
count"
ais wine drinking becoming more popu-
Enthusiastically. The table d'hOtes, with
good wine all the way from so cents to a
dollar. are advertised all over town, and a
great many people, who get tired of the Gus
tomary cuisine, 90 to them for the novelty
of the thing. Then they find what an ad-
aid to digestion even the thinest
is, and before long they become sPPre-
and take it regularly. | know many
a Young fellow Of twenty-five or four who is
cspable of telling good glass of wine when
be tastes it to day, and who drinks carefully
and intelligently. Youngsters Of that age
ten or fifteen years SgO poured down whisky
and rum at the bar and seldom had any
taste for wine. You may depend upon 1t
that there is a growing appreciation OF good
wines in New York. As fer champagne
drinking, il seems to me that grows more
popular constantly. This is the great cham
agne-drinking country now. | am rather
interested in wines myself. and when | run
across a man Who knows slott them, l
it a point to chat with him about
them. Last night, when at Delmonieo g.
met the son of the head Of q famous cham
uagne firm who was on his frat visit to
America. | asked him casually how many
acres his vineyard covered, and he told me.
Later | asked him how much wine produced
TO the acre, and subsequently multiplied
one By the other, which of courss gave the
total yield of the vineyard. This l did
quietly and slightly. Later he was boastiug
Of the sale Of their champagne in New
York. and, according to his figures, they
sold 5000 bottles q year more IN New York
CITY than were manufactured By the entire
vineyard. That may give you some idea OF
the sdulteration Of champsgnes-
z"As fsr as / am personally concerned,
Champagne is not q ~tsvorite drink with me.
Il tastes precisely ike sweetened seltzer.
But to the majority of people it is the wine
above all others. When q party OF young
men start out for the purpose Of making
things 20, they never drink anything bat
champagne. Its effects on different people
IS curious l was impressed with this on
New Years eve in Delmonico's A party
Of men sat down to drink the new year IN.
They drank nothing but champagne, and
as they commenced several hours before
1884 expired they were about nine sheets IN
the wind when IS arrived. They had reach
ed the Whoop-la staged the gamet then. The
tar man of the party rolled around Ia his
chair and laughed perpetuslly. Atall and
sombre nan, deadly pale and melancholy.
one Of the dudes that made mp the party,
wanted to 6ght. and the rest roared at the