After writing the Spirits of the Oval Office article, I realized that I had so much fun doing the research for it, that I wanted to continue writing a series of articles based on that topic. After a couple of weeks stewing on it, trying to figure out where exactly to go with it, I now present to you, the Sophisticated Elite, the next installment: Spirits of the British Empire, which will give us some insight into the drink preferences of some of the most influential and renowned political figures, past and present, of our cousins across the pond.

This list will start with the Queen Mum, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who lived from 1900 to 2002. She was the Queen of England during World War II, and Hitler once described her as being the most dangerous woman in Europe. Always a popular figure in Great Britain, she was well known for her love of gin. Her cocktail of choice was Gin and Dubonnet (according to sources, mixed 3:1, Dubonnet). Dubonnet is a French aperitif, otherwise known as an appetite stimulant. It is a combination of fermented wine, spices, and quinine.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, Queen Elizabeth II, who has been occupying the throne since 1952, is also a lover of gin. Her cocktail is a Gordon’s gin and tonic, with three slices of lemon. This takes me back to the second article that I wrote, ‘Hold The Lime,’ in which I argued in favor of substituting lemon for lime in vodka tonics. The present Queen of England opts not for the traditional garnish of a lime wedge, and instead goes heavy with three lemon wedges. It sounds delicious.

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A collection formerly owned by a late US whisky enthusiast, purported to be the largest and most varied collection of spirits yet to appear at auction, will be presented for bidding later this year by Bonhams Fine Art Auctioneers & Valuers. The extremely rare collection is said to contain close to 3,000 bottles of whisky.

Well-respected auctioneers of art, pictures, collectables and motor cars, Bonhams also employs a whisky specialist named Martin Green. In a statement released yesterday, Green told BBC News that in his more than 20 years of conducting whisky auctions, “this is the most exciting collection I have ever handled.”

The collection had formerly belonged to a California man named Willard Folsom, who spent 18 years gathering Scotch malts after reading a newspaper article about them in the popular American paper USA Today. According to the BBC report, Whisky from places ranging from Orkney to Speyside to the Lowlands is represented in the collection, including many commemorative bottles never to be released again by distillers. “The sale of the collection provides the opportunity to buy many collectables of the future,” Green says.

Folsom was a former United Airlines worker who toured Scotland with his family, building his collection as they traveled. He died last year at age 64. Although the whisky is to be auctioned by Bonhams in Edinburgh on November 18th of this year, there is a strong possibility that any remaining stock will be returned to the states and sold in New York, as well as in Hong Kong sometime in early 2010.

President Obama has garnered a lot of attention lately with the so-called ‘Beer Summit’ at the White House, between himself, Harvard professor Henry Gates Jr., and sergeant James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass. Police Department. The story between these three is well documented by every major news outlet in the country, so rehashing it here seems redundant to me. My interest in this stems from the President using beer as the medium to sort out their differences, and that has caused me to do some research into other spirits of the Oval Office. What have been the preferred beverages of some of our notable Commanders in Chief?

George Washington (1789-1797) was regarded as the most successful whiskey producer in the country after his tenure of President was over. His Mount Vernon distillery produced 11,000 gallons of Rye Whiskey per year, but within a decade of his death, it fell into disrepair. Washington was also known to have dined and drank whiskey at Charleston, South Carolina’s famous McCrady’s Tavern in 1791, during his Southern Tour.

Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) is regarded today as one of the healthiest early American presidents, and also the foremost wine connoisseur to have ever held office. According to a letter to an inquiring doctor in 1819, he would drink 3 to 4 glasses of wine at dinner, but never a drop otherwise. He wrote that he did not drink ardent wines or spirits, and he would also water down his wine so as to weaken its effect on him.

Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) was born into a bourbon family; His father was a distillery hand at the site that Knob Creek bourbon is named after today (in a distillery that was owned by one of Daniel Boone‘s relatives, no less!). Reaching adult hood, he applied for and received a license to sell alcohol in Illinois, and went on to operate numerous taverns. Despite the taverns and a grocery store that sold primarily whiskey, his personal stance on alcohol was one of educated, responsible drinking in moderation. As for his personal tastes, it’s hard to figure out because he spent a good portion of his political career appeasing the Temperance group, which eventually evolved into the Prohibition group.

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Every well-learned journalist prescribes and adheres to some manual of style. In fact, many major media outlets have their own guides to proper style for their writers, like the Associated Press Stylebook (which I use), The Economist Style Guide, and of course, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. I bring this up because, as I understand it, the latter of these three, used by the astute newspaper of the same name hailing from the heart of the Big Apple, recently modified it’s guidelines regarding the use of the words whiskey versus whisky.

Blogger Eric Asimov of the Times‘ excellent blog The Pour recently used the spelling whisky in reference to single-malt scotch, to which Times readers scolded him profoundly, asking whether or not he knew better that to omit the “e” when referring to Scotch and Canadian whisky.

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