I’m a little bit obsessed with the alcohol consumption of royalty, if you hadn’t noticed already. Usually when we’re talking about drunk royal ladies, we’re talking about the Duchess of Cornwall doing shots of rum on tour and guzzling wine at local festivals and/or unhinged presidential state visits. Camilla is a well-known boozehound. But we only learned a few years ago that the Queen is quite a boozehound too. It makes sense – the Queen Mum was quite the drinker, so that’s how QEII grew up, surrounded by lots of alcoholic beverages. The Queen reportedly consumes at least four alcoholic beverages a day, sometimes more, and most of the beverages are gin & tonic, champagne, maybe a martini. But apparently, the Queen isn’t much of a wine drinker:
Queen Elizabeth passes on wine — at least, her own wine. The 93-year-old monarch visited the National Institute of Agricultural Botany near Cambridge on Tuesday to celebrate 100 years of crop research, where conversation turned to the rising popularity of English wine. Tina Barsby, chief executive of NIAB, told reporters, “NIAB is involved in almost every crop, and one of our people mentioned we had an experiential vineyard in Kent and she said she had some vines in Windsor.”
“I told her that the official wine for the Oxford and Cambridge boat race was English sparkling rather than French champagne, and that English wine was becoming more popular and much better,” Barsby continued. “And she said, ‘I don’t actually drink wine myself, but I hear it’s very good.’”
People goes on to say that the Queen Mum was a wine-drinker, and you have to remember this too: Camilla’s father was a wine merchant, and Camilla pretty much grew up in the wine trade and she knows a lot about wineries and all of that. I’m not saying it’s all connected and that the Queen is purposefully snubbing Camilla, of course not. I just find it interesting that, like, the Queen was chosen for this event when clearly Camilla would have enjoyed it more. Camilla probably would have moved into National Institute of Agricultural Botany for a few months so she could learn more about wine and taste-test all of the new wines on the come up. It’s also more than possible that wine just doesn’t agree with the Queen – some people are vinophiles, some are not. Personally, I can only nurse a nice, dry white wine but most reds make me sick and give me a bad headache.
PS… Stop making this poor 93-year-old woman shovel dirt, okay?
Photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red.
It mostly sounds like she just sort of insulted them.
Whenever I visit family in the U.K. I am shocked at the amount of drinking they do. It’s a huge part of the culture there…don’t know why though.
I find it hilarious TQ has dietary restrictions like no garlic and has a limited menu variety, but drinks like that. I wish I could. But I’m sure with all she has to deal with and has to hear, those drinks need to keep coming. Like I said, I wish I could drink like that. It would make life more tolerable. And I too can’t do reds anymore :(. They make me ill after I had my kids. So it’s beer, hard liquor and whites.
If I drank four G&T’s in one day, I’d be passed out cold.
Depends on how much alcohol the bartender puts in. But I hear ya, I have two drinks now and I just want to go to sleep.
@Seraphina, I think three Gins and one Tonic would be a great start! LOL! LOL!
Haha, yes Camilla would have loved that.
As an aside, my mother has always been anti-Camilla because of Diana (she wasn’t a big royal/Diana person, just only read headlines and sided with Diana) but she said to me last week that “after that WINK, Camilla has my undying respect.” LOLOL.
Haha that wink was epic.
LOL! The Queen is a boozehound! I love it! And it made my day!
Here I was thinking I should cut down on my drinking. Now I know I am fit to be a queen!
Lol!
How do we get from the Queen doesn’t drink wine to she’s a boozehound? I heard that reports of her drinking was greatly exaggerated in the media too. She likes a fortified wine Dubonnet and gin like her mother did.
Her Majesty insisted on planting the tree by herself. She’s far from perfect but I love her.
I just remember my dad (who has never had more than two beers in a day in his life) reading about the Queen Mum’s alcohol consumption years ago.
“No wonder everyone in the British Royal Family lives forever! They’re all pickled and preserved!”
I still think about it and giggle whenever I read about the BRF and their boozy ways/see pictures of them with wine in the morning.
A woman after my own heart
That tree is planted really low. It will probably die.
I wish I could at least tolerate wine, because sometimes social situations seem to call for it, but every sip I have tried tastes like poison to me.
Also, in video from this event, the Queen practically insists on shoveling the dirt herself, saying something like “I’m still perfectly capable of planting a tree.”
I’m with her! Never could develop a taste for beer, wine gives me a headache and so does cider now. I drink quite rarely, but if I do it’s lemoncello, amaretto or maybe an espresso martini – yum!
Whiskey/ginger for me!! The best ever. Re reds…everyone, it’s the oak (tannin) that gives the headaches. Find a red that hasn’t been ‘oaked’ and you may be able to enjoy the occasional glass of red again.
“Stop making this 93-year-old woman shovel dirt, ok?”
Dead.