Churchill drank ‘42,000 bottles’ of fizz

Britain’s famous wartime leader drank 42,000 bottles of Champagne in his lifetime, according to a new book.

Winston Churchill

Sir Winston Churchill’s fondness for fizz made headline news after it was reported by Mail Online that the British prime minister drank a staggering 42,000 bottles of Champagne.

Along with other “dotty but true” facts, it was taken from 1,411 QI Facts to Knock You Sideways by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson and James Harken, the team behind the British TV show QI, set to be published by Faber on 2 October.

The consumption between 1908 and Churchill’s death in 1965 works out at two bottles a day – some five times the government’s recommended daily limit on alcohol.

Add in the occasional hock for breakfast, the dilute Scotch and water every morning, the dry Martinis, highballs and port in the evening, and it begins to look a little unlikely.

The historian Michael Richards, suggests alcohol was partly a prop like the endless cigars “rarely smoked beyond a third, and usually discarded after being well-chewed.”

Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill

Churchill claimed the four essentials of life were: “Hot baths, cold champagne, new peas and old brandy.” For Pol Roger he was the ultimate brand ambassador, and when he died the champagne house famously put a black border around the labels of its Brut NV. Pol Roger released the first ‘Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill’ in 1984.

Earlier this week Gerard Depardieu claimed he puts away 14 bottles of wine a day, a worthy adversary to Churchill perhaps.