Queen Camilla’s favourite tipple is not a gin and tonic, as has previously been believed, but is instead a glass of red wine, as she grew up close to the wine business.
The Queen, who is rather appropriately President of the United Kingdom Vineyards Association, said: “My father was in the wine business so as children we used to take wine and water and I have drunk it ever since.
“He always said it was his medicine and it kept him going – he used to take two or three glasses a day.”
At a reception for the 50th anniversary of the Vineyards Association she explained her love for a glass of claret: “People always ask me how I became involved in it all, well, first of all, I love wine, but secondly, my father was in the wine business, so I was brought up as a child drinking wine and water rather like the French.”
In an interview with her son, food critic Tom Parker-Bowles, in You magazine last year Camilla gave an insight into what her last meal and drink would be.
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She told him her last supper would start with her own homegrown asparagus, followed by Angela Hartnett’s risotto or dover sole meunière.
For dessert she would enjoy some berries and ice cream washed down with a couple of glasses of good red wine.
She said: “Some bitter chocolate ice cream. Plus strawberries and raspberries and lots of clotted cream. Along with a really good glass of red claret. And, seeing it’s my last supper, probably two.”
Her husband King Charles prefers a gin martini before dinner every night, with royal commentator Gordon Rayner saying it is mixed with half gin and half dry vermouth, garnished with an olive or lemon twist.
The King is so dedicated to this ritual he reportedly even brings the ingredients along with him whenever he travels, as well as his own glass.
Mr Rayner told The Telegraph: “When he travels abroad he takes his own spirits with him to be mixed by his staff to his precise taste, while the Queen takes her own supply of red wine, usually from the Pomerol appellation of Bordeaux.
“The King may sip a glass of wine during dinner but his martini is effectively his only drink of the day.”
