The sight of Barack Obama downing a pint at his pre-G7 summit Alpine
breakfast on Sunday was surprising and cheering in equal measure. Drinking early
in the day doesn’t usually come with such official approbation. We tend to think
of morning drinks in extremes – a bloody mary or swift half to provide a
much-needed quick fix after a long night, or perhaps bubbles for special
occasion breakfasts. However, in many parts of the world, booze at breakfast is
seen as a perfectly normal way to start the day.
The weisswurst frühstück Obama was enjoying is a beery Bavarian stalwart:
boiled sausages with mustard, freshly baked pretzels and a cold weissbier, the
operative word here being cold. Alcohol in the morning must be fresh and zippy.
A bit of fizz, something dry, a hint of sweetness, a sharp kick – as drinks
writer Henry Jeffreys puts it, “it’s the pick-me-up that makes you mellow”. Beer
or ale for breakfast is not uncommon in the rest of northern Europe,
particularly in Belgium – and even, until as late as the 1980s, in England,
where breweries would give free drinks to their workers. While this was probably
to counter pilfering, it also continued a long tradition of brewers enjoying a
hearty brew to start the day, harking back to the “liquid bread” of 16th-century
friars. It would seem there is more to an early-morning pint than just hair of
the dog.
Around the Mediterranean, you’ll often see older patrons having a caffè
corretto, the espresso quite literally “corrected” with a shot of something
stronger: grappa, sambuca or brandy. It is a habit Mitch Tonks and Mat Prowse
adopted at a fish market in Spain 15 years ago; they call it their morning fire.
The grappa is sometimes substituted with armagnac, Fernet-Branca or whatever
other local spirit the two chefs encounter on their travels. “It takes the body
by surprise,” writes Tonks in his new cookbook, The Seahorse. “We have found
that in this moment of lightness and clarity we have made our best decisions.”
Which makes the Seahorse restaurant staff living proof that drinking in the day
might not actually render working minds as useless as you’d think. It’s all
about being restrained: “The trick is to have just one glass,” says Tonks,
“otherwise the surprise is spoiled.”
London wine bar Vinoteca has just opened a Kings Cross branch, the first to
serve breakfast. “You don’t have to not drink wine early in the day,” counsels
co-owner Brett Woonton. Woonton and his partner, Charlie Young, focused on
bottles that would work best with breakfast, plumping for lightness and
freshness over full-bodied heft; drinks that would be accessible and
approachable. So they have got a pink moscato, the sweet, fruity fizz of which
sits handsomely with a plate of pancakes; a slightly frizzante, dry red bonarda
that cuts judiciously through the richness of a meaty breakfast; and a German
riesling to pair with fresh fruit or muesli.
For Woonton, a good breakfast wine should be the oenological equivalent of an
early-morning swim: invigorating and enlivening. And that is a strategy tried
and tested in Sicily. Food writer Rachel Roddy, the author of Five Quarters,
says her partner’s grandfather, a Sicilian farmer, “drank a litre of white with
his breakfast of bread and caponata every single morning at six”. That would be
followed by a whole lemon, eaten like an apple, before he left the house. “He
also drank a litre for lunch,” she continues “and never drank water. He was
tiny, without fat, as strong as a horse and he lived until 95.”
The thought of all that wine, particularly without water, is a terrifying
prospect, but there may well be something in it in moderation. Breakfast, it is
becoming increasingly clear, is the meal of the day – maybe a celebratory tipple
should become a mainstay on the menu.
