Catawaba Cup
To each bottle of dry catawba allow two bottles of soda water and a quarter pint of curacoa, mix in a pitcher, and add ice abundantly. If not convenient to get bottled soda, use water and sugar or lemonade to mix with the wine and liqueur.
A wine cup in the old sense: one bottle of wine stretched with soda and a measure of liqueur, meant to be mixed in quantity and poured from a pitcher. The proportions are generous with the soda, so the balance depends entirely on how dry the wine is.
- The measurementsA quarter pint is 4 fl oz, or half a cup, of curaçao, about 120 ml. Bottle sizes were not standardised then: a wine bottle ran roughly 700-800 ml, and soda water was often sold in smaller bottles, so "two bottles of soda" need not amount to 1.5 litres.
- YieldOn the assumption of a 750 ml wine bottle and two like-sized soda bottles, roughly 2.4 litres before ice, which is eight to ten tall glasses. Halve it for a small table; the mixture does not keep once carbonated soda is added.
- Dry CatawbaCatawba is an American labrusca-family grape with a pronounced grapey, musky flavour. Dry versions are made in Ohio and the Finger Lakes but are not widely distributed; a dry Niagara, a dry rosé, or any light off-dry white will stand in, though the character shifts.
- CuraçaoIn this era curaçao meant a sweetened orange liqueur, usually on a brandy or other grape-spirit base, closer to modern orange curaçao than to dry triple sec. Use orange curaçao if you want the original weight; triple sec will read thinner and drier.
- Soda waterBottled soda water of the period was often faintly saline. Plain seltzer is the closest match; club soda adds a mineral edge that suits the drink.
- The fallback lineThe substitution at the end is not a footnote but a real second version. Water with sugar, or lemonade, gives a still cup rather than a sparkling one, and lemonade in period usage means fresh lemon juice, sugar and water, not a carbonated soft drink.
- Ice"Ice abundantly" most likely means large pieces in the pitcher rather than cubes in the glass, since ice of the period came in blocks. Add it last and serve at once, since two parts soda to one part wine dilutes quickly as it melts.
- ServingCups were garnished with cucumber peel, borage, mint or a wheel of orange. None is required, but a strip of orange peel picks up the curaçao.
The "cup" was a whole family of nineteenth-century drinks — claret cup, cider cup, champagne cup — built on the principle of extending a bottle of wine with aerated water, a little liqueur, ice and something aromatic, then serving it from a pitcher at picnics, balls and summer suppers. Catawba was the obvious American wine to put in one: a native grape variety named for the Catawba River, it was the backbone of the Ohio Valley wine industry that Nicholas Longworth built around Cincinnati in the 1830s and 1840s, and Longfellow wrote an ode to it in 1854. Sparkling Catawba in particular was marketed as an American answer to champagne. Vine disease and the westward shift of American winegrowing eventually cut Ohio's output badly, but Catawba remained a familiar name on a wine list, familiar enough that a recipe could assume readers knew what to buy.