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Moselle Cup
To a bottle of Moselle in a jug pour a glassful of sherry, or pale brandy, and add four or five thin slices of pineapple, the peel of half a lemon, cut very thin, and some lumps of ice, and sweeten to taste. A bottle of iced soda-or-seltzer-water must be added before using.
A Victorian summer cup: wine lengthened with fortified wine, fruit and aerated water, mixed in a jug rather than a glass. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions are given in period measures and the assembly order matters.
- MoselleA light, high-acid Riesling from the Mosel valley, generally dry to off-dry and low in alcohol. Any inexpensive Mosel Riesling or a similar crisp German white works; avoid heavy oaked wines, which flatten under soda water. A period bottle is close enough to a modern 750 ml.
- "A glassful"This means a wine glass, conventionally around 2 to 4 fl oz rather than the large modern pour. Start at 2 fl oz of sherry or brandy and taste; the spirit is meant to give backbone, not to dominate.
- Which sherryAn amontillado or dry oloroso suits the drink better than a cream sherry, which will push it sweet before you have added any sugar. "Pale brandy" means a young, lightly coloured grape brandy.
- SweeteningUse sugar syrup rather than loose sugar or lumps, which will not dissolve in a cold liquid. A tablespoon or two of 1:1 syrup is usually enough for a dry Moselle.
- Lemon peelPare it in wide strips with a peeler and take no white pith, which turns the cup bitter. Half a lemon's worth is plenty for one bottle.
- Pineapple and steepingFresh pineapple, sliced thin, gives up its perfume fairly quickly in the cold wine; half an hour or so is usually enough. Left to stand much longer the fruit can begin to taste stewed, and tinned pineapple in syrup will oversweeten the cup.
- IceVictorian "lumps" were chipped from a block and melted slowly. Modern cubes dilute faster, so chill the wine and the soda thoroughly beforehand and add ice only as you serve, or the cup will be watery.
- The soda goes in lastAdd the chilled soda or seltzer immediately before pouring and stir once, gently. Anything more vigorous, or any delay, and the drink goes flat.
- YieldDepends on the size of the soda bottle used; with a 750 ml wine bottle and a small bottle of soda, expect something over a litre, or six to eight cups.
Summer "cups" — claret cup, cider cup, Badminton, Moselle cup — were the standard warm-weather drink of the English country house and the lawn party from the middle of the nineteenth century, and Cassell's gives a run of them together. The formula is always the same: a bottle of wine, a small measure of something stronger, aromatics from citrus peel or borage or cucumber, ice, and aerated water added at the last moment. Moselle was a fashionable choice because German Riesling was light and imported in quantity to Britain in this period, and its acidity stands up to dilution better than a heavier wine. Pineapple signals the same period taste: no longer the rarity it had been in the eighteenth century, when the fruit was grown in heated pineries and displayed as a status object, but by the later part of the century an imported and available luxury that a middle-class household could put in a jug. The reliance on bottled soda or seltzer also dates the drink — commercial aerated waters were widely sold by then, and the cup as a genre depends on them.