96 LEXPERT MAGAZINE
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016
WINE
WHEN I WAS GROWING up in England, there were two alco-
holic beverage ads plastered on billboards everywhere in London.
One was for a stout and one for a wine: "Guinness Is Good For You"
and "Wincarnis Tonic Wine," a product that made the same health
claims as Guinness, only more so.
I must confess I drank my fair share of Guinness as a postgradu-
ate student in Dublin, and can attest to its goodness (much better,
incidentally, than the stout we get in Canada because — say the
mavens of Moore Street — of the River Liffey, whose waters flow
through the centre of Dublin).
At the time, 40 years ago, when I was living in James Joyce's city,
the Guinness brewery employed inspectors to tour the pubs in or-
der to ensure that Guinness was being served at 65 degrees Fahren-
heit. With a well-pulled pint of the black stout you could carve your
initials in the creamy head and they would stay there, intact, until
you had finished the glass.
My father was a doctor in London whose surgery included the
Lambeth Walk and the Kennington Oval cricket ground. I can't
remember him ever prescribing Wincarnis for his patients, and I
had never actually tasted the tonic wine until recently at lunch in
one of Toronto's fancy steak houses.
I was the guest of Roderick Mackenzie, Director of Ian Macleod
Distillers. Apart from owning Glengoyne Highland Single Malt,
Isle of Skye, Lang's Blended Scotch, Hedges & Butler, King Rob-
ert II and several other malt whiskies, Ian Macleod Distillers also
own Wincarnis Tonic Wine. ey acquired the product when they
bought Hedges & Butler in 1998.
Hedges & Butler, incidentally, was a venerable London wine
merchant company established in in 1667 and subsequently the
purveyor of spirits and wines to Queen Victoria and "to succes-
sive monarchs, both British and foreign." It's not recorded whether
Queen Victoria's butler ordered Wincarnis to be sent to the palace
for anything that ailed the monarch; Victoria, of course, outlived
her husband and died at age 81.
One of the conditions of the sale of Hedges & Butler to Ian Ma-
cleod Distillers was that the Wincarnis brand be preserved. e
purported elixir is now produced by Broadland Wineries in the
English county of Norfolk.
As to the efficacy of Wincarnis I can't make judgment, since at
the time of sampling I was not suffering from "colds, influenza,
bronchitis [or] pneumonia," all of which it purported to cure in a
1915 ad. But it did promise to safeguard me "against most of the
| DETOURS |
A Wine for What Ails
Wincarnis Tonic Wine, which tastes rather like Christmas pudding in a glass, has survived the ages
