BROOK and Hellier, &c. having discovered that several gentlemen’s servants who have been sent to their taverns and cellars for neat Oporto wines (which is 18d. per quart) have instead thereof bought the small Viana, which is but 15d. a quart; and that some who have been sent directly to the above taverns and cellars have never come there, but carried home (like traitors) something else from other places for Brook and Helliers. Gentlemen are therefore desired, when they suspect themselves imposed on, to send the wine immediately to the place they ordered it from, or a note of what it was they sent for, in order to know the truth, and Brook and Helliers will bear the extraordinary charge of porters on this occasion.
From this and kindred advertisements it looks as though gentlemen were not at the time in the habit of keeping large quantities of wine in the house, but rather of having it in fresh and fresh as required from the tavern, or of going round themselves, and taking it home under their belts. Also the servants of the time do not appear to be possessed of much more honesty than falls to the lot of the domestics of even these degenerate days. The effect of the rage for port as soon as it was once tried, is shown by the following, which also appeared in the January of 1712, in the Daily Courant:—
THE first loss is the best especially in the Wine Trade, and upon that consideration Mr John Crooke will now sell his French Claret for 4s. a gallon, to make an end of a troublesome and losing trade. Dated the 7th of January from his vault in Broad street, 5 doors below the Angel and Crown Tavern, behind the Royal Exchange. John Crooke.
But this appeal to the lovers of bargains, as well as of claret, was evidently a failure; for three or four days afterwards, and also in the same paper, another, and quite different attempt, is made to draw the unwilling drinkers to the Angel and Crown:—