Favourite tipples
He enjoyed whiskey (Johnnie Walker, both Red and Black Labels), Hine cognac and, most famously perhaps, Pol Roger champagne.
In 1915 he painted ‘Bottlescape’ in homage to his favourite whisky, Johnnie Walker ® Black Label, and it still hangs in the dining room at Chartwell.
It has been claimed that, having been served ArArAt brandy (normally reserved for the Communist elite) at the Yalta Conference in 1945, Churchill developed a taste for it and that Stalin then sent him a regular supply of four hundred bottles every year. There’s no evidence to support this, though. It would seem that Churchill enjoyed quite a range of brandies and cognacs, including l’Hertier de Jean Fremicourt and Prunier but generally Churchill preferred Hine, the cognac he always served at Chartwell.
And of course he famously enjoyed champagne. He became friends with Odette Pol-Roger in the 1940s, having been introduced to her by Alfred Duff Cooper at the British Embassy's Armistice Day party in Paris, and called her home at 44 venue de Champagne as “the world’s most drinkable address”. But he had in fact been enjoying the drink for many years at that point. There is evidence of him as a customer from at least 1908, and he remained an unwavering and faithful client until he died.
Each year on his birthday, Odette would send him a case of vintage champagne, and, in honour of their friendship, Churchill named one of his favourite racehorses Pol Roger after her.
On Churchill’s death, Pol Roger put black-bordered labels on the bottles destined for the UK. And in 1975, Pol Roger commemorated the tenth anniversary of his death, creating a robust "Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill".
The first release of the Champagne was on 6 June 1984, forty years after D-Day. Fittingly, it was launched at Churchill's birthplace, Blenheim Palace.
Read more about Pol Roger here.
