Cocktail Talk: Castle Richmond
Was thinking about how it’s mid-March and still quite chilly in this PWN part of the country, the kind of weather which leads me to a nice whisky or whiskey punch, hot, full of swellness, warming on multiple levels (temperature and whisky-a-ture). And then also thinking about yesterday being Saint Patrick’s Day, which then led me to thinking about the Anthony Trollope book called Castle Richmond, an early book for Spiked Punch pal Mr. Trollope, one that takes place in the beginning days of the Irish famine, and which, like many of his works, has dollops of humor in the midst of some non-humorous situations, and then all of it sprinkled with little everyday details, relationships, Cocktail Talks, life, love, and everything else (if that’s not getting too deep). Which then led me to wanting to post the below quote here, from said novel, a quote full of whisky punch. Oh, be sure to read all the Trollope Cocktail Talks for more from the book, and from many of his other works, too.
But the parlour was warm enough; warm and cosy, though perhaps at times a little close; and of evenings there would pervade it a smell of whisky punch, not altogether acceptable to unaccustomed nostrils. Not that the rector of Drumbarrow was by any means an intemperate man. His single tumbler of whisky toddy, repeated only on Sundays and some other rare occasions, would by no means equal, in point of drinking, the ordinary port of an ordinary English clergyman. But whisky punch does leave behind a savour of its intrinsic virtues, delightful no doubt to those who have imbibed its grosser elements, but not equally acceptable to others who may have been less fortunate.
–Anthony Trollope, Castle Richmond
