Sack
It is vain to enter here into a discussion of
exactly what sack was, since so much has been
written about it. The name was certainly applied
to sweet wines from many places. A contemporary
authority, Gervayse Markham, says in The English
Housewife, "Your best Sackes are of Seres in
Spain, your smaller of Galicia or Portugal: your
strong Sackes are of the islands of the
Canaries."
Sack was, therefore, a special make of the
strong, dry, sweet, light-colored wines of the
sherry family, such as come from the South, from
Portugal, Spain, and the Canary Islands. By the
seventeenth century the name was applied to all
sweet wines of this class, as distinguished from
Rhenish wines on one hand and red wines on the
other. Many do not wish to acknowledge that sack
was sherry, but there was little distinction
between them. Sherris-sack, named by Shakespeare,
was practically also sherry.
Sack was so cheap that it could be used by all
classes. From an original license granted by Sir
Walter Raleigh, in 1584, to one Bradshaw to keep a
tavern we learn that sack was then worth two
shillings a gallon.
Perhaps the most famous use of sack was in the
making of sack-posset, that drink of brides, of
grooms, of wedding and christening parties. A
rhymed rule for sack-posset found its way into
many collections, and into English and American
newspapers. It is said to have been written by Sir
Fleetwood Fletcher. It was thus printed in the New
York Gazette of February 13, 1744:-
" A Receipt for all young Ladies that are
going to be Married. To make a
SACK-POSSET
From famed Barbadoes on the Western Main
Fetch sugar half a pound; fetch sack from Spain
A pint; and from the Eastern Indian Coast
Nutmeg, the glory of our Northern toast.
O'er flaming coals together let them heat
Till the all-conquering sack dissolves the sweet.
O'er such another fire set eggs, twice ten,
New born from crowing cock and speckled hen;
Stir them with steady hand, and conscience
pricking
To see the untimely fate of twenty chicken.
From shining shelf take down your brazen skillet,
A quart of milk from gentle cow will fill it.
When boiled and cooked, put milk and sack to egg,
Unite them firmly like the triple League.
Then covered close, together let them dwell
Till Miss twice sings: You must not kiss and tell.
Each lad and lass snatch up their murdering spoon,
And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon."
Sack was drunk in America during the first
half-century of colonial life. It was frequently
imported to Virginia; and all the early
instructions for the voyage cross-seas, such as
Governor Winthrop's to his wife and those of the
Plymouth Plantations, urge the shipping of sack
for the sailors. Even in Judge Sewall's day, a
century after the planting of Boston, sack-posset
was drunk at Puritan weddings, but a psalm and a
prayer made it properly solemn. Judge Sewall wrote
of a Boston wedding:-
"There was a pretty deal of company
present. Many young gentlemen and young
gentlewomen. Mr. Noyes made a speech, said love
was the sugar to sweeten every condition in the
marriage state. After the Sack-Posset sang 45th
Psalm from 8th verse to end."
Canary soon displaced sack in popular
affection, and many varieties of closely allied
wines were imported. Sir Edmund Andros named in
his excise list "Fayal wines, or any other
wines of the Western Islands, Madeira, Malaga,
Canary, Tent, and Alcant." Claret was not
popular. The consumption of sweet wines was
astonishing, and the quality was exceeding good.
Spiced wines were much sold at taverns, sangaree
and mulled wines. Brigham's Tavern at Westborough
had a simple recipe for mulled wine: simply a
quart of boiling hot Madeira, half a pint of
boiling water, six eggs beaten to a froth, all
sweetened and spiced. Nutmeg was the favorite
flavoring, and nutmegs gilded and beribboned were
an esteemed gift. The importation of them was in
early days wholly controlled by the Dutch. High
livers-bon vivants-carried nutmegs in their
pockets, fashionable dames also. One of the
prettiest trinkets of colonial times is the dainty
nutmeg holder, of wrought silver or Battersea
enamel, just large enough to hold a single nutmeg.
The inside of the cover is pierced or corrugated
to form a grater. The ones now before me, both a
century and a half old, when opened exhale a
strong aroma of nutmeg, though it is many a year
since they have been used. With a nutmeg in a
pocket holder, the exquisite traveller, whether
man or woman, could be sure of a dainty spiced
wine flavored to taste; "atop the musky nut
could grated be," even in the most remote
tavern, for wine was everywhere to be found, but
nutmegs were a luxury. Negus, a washy warm
wine-punch invented in Queen Anne's day by Colonel
Negus, was also improved by a flavoring of nutmeg.
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