The most famous ship ever to set sail on our oceans left Southampton, UK on the 10th of April 1912 at 12 PM with 2,208 people passengers & crew, it docked in Cherbourg, France at 6:30 PM picking up 281 passengers & dropping off 24 and then left the same day at 8:10 PM and docked in Queenstown (now named Cobh), Ireland on the 11th of April at 11:30 AM, picking up 117 people and by 1:30 PM had set sail for its final destination in New York City, says an article published in Glassofbubbly.
The incident
If all went to plan, the voyage was scheduled to take 5 days and 18 hours, or a total of 137 hours, the RMS Titanic should have arrived in New York on the 17th of April 1912, docking at the White Star Line’s Pier 60.
The Titanic hit the Iceberg at 11:40 PM on April 14th, 1912, it broke in half and sunk at approximately 2:20 AM on the 15th of April, taking around 2 hours and 40 minutes from hitting the iceberg to being submerged.
The ship had only 20 lifeboats, enough room for 1,178 people, despite that, only 706 people survived and 1,517 people died (at least 700 were crew), either by going down with the ship or freezing in the North Atlantic Ocean at 27°F or around -2.7°C.
The first classroom
But if we rewind a couple of days, we’ll find ourselves on board the Titanic in The First Class Smoking & Drinking Room, where the floor is laid with blue and red linoleum tiles and the ceiling plastered with medallions, you sit at a square table with raised edges to reduce spillage in rough weather, you look around and see lit cigars and gentlemen playing cards.
Upon your request cigars and drinks could be made available to you, a steward is always on standby to bring you a drink from the adjacent bar, on this occasion you ask to see the drinks menu.
The Titanic didn’t have the traditional Bars where consumers would sit and order a drink, each of the Smoking & Drinking Rooms has an adjacent Bar where only the staff would enter to prepare and collect drinks, to then serve in the Smoking & Drinking Room, the ship’s bars also served as a storage place for drinks.
The Bar itself would be open from 8:30 AM and close at 11:30 PM, with the Smoking and Drinking Room closing at midnight.
We’ve just been delivered the drinks menu and have to now decide what we are going to drink on this fine evening.
Vintage champagne
If we take a look at the ship’s manifest, we see that the Titanic contained 1,500 bottles of Wine, 15,000 Champagne Glasses, 20,000 Bottles of Beer & Stout, 850 Bottles of Spirits, and the cargo manifest showed a further 63 Cases of Champagne, 17 Cases of Cognac, 70 Cases of Wine and 191 Cases of Spirits. With 8,000 Cigars onboard as well.
When Christening a new ship, you are meant to break a bottle, normally Champagne on the ship’s hull, this is said to mean good luck for the voyages ahead, but the Titanic was never Christened.
According to the National Geographic Magazine, in 2010 divers found 168 bottles of bubbly unopened in the Titanic. A bottle of 1907 Vintage Champagne Heidsieck’s Goût Américain (Heidsieck & Co. Monopole) was recovered being stored in the right conditions or 3-4 degrees Celsius, inside the sunken Titanic, it’s worth $275,000.
You could also order Cocktails on board the Titanic, including the Punch à la Romaine, which was enjoyed by the passengers on the Titanic.
Ingredients
If you wanted to re-create one for yourself, to get a taste of the Titanic, then the ingredients are as follows:
- Fill the glass with Crushed Ice
- 1 Egg White
- 30mls of White Rum
- 15mls of Simple Syrup
- 15mls Lemon Juice
- 30mls of Orange Juice
- 60mls of Champagne or Sparkling Wine
- Twist of Orange Peel, for Garnish
Cocktail Tasting Notes – “A refreshing, chilled, creamy balance of orange and lemon displaying subtle citrus, combined with the fluffy egg, that reminds me of meringue, with a creamy, warming coat of oaky Rum and elegant yellow fruits from the Champagne.”
Champagne Laurent Lequart Millésime 2012
I chose this Champagne because of the vintage year, the grapes in this bottle were harvested in 2012, marking 100 years after the Titanic sunk in 1912.
Champagne Laurent Lequart are located on their family farm in Passy-Grigny, in the heart of the Marne Valley, with 11 hectares of farmland, most of it planted with vines growing the Meunier grape which they use to craft their Champagnes.
Aroma: “Silky, creamy, smooth, elegance on the aroma, showcasing melted butter, yeast, bread, toast, brioche yellow fruits, yellow floral, apricot in cream, and much more.”
Flavour: “A balance between smooth, silky, dry and citrus, yellow fruits, yellow stone fruits, yellow floral, yeast, citrus and more on the palate.”
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Source: GlassOfBubbly
