Pimm's

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Logo of the Pimm’s brand
A Pimm's Cup with a bottle of Pimm's No. 1

Pimm’s is a brand for liqueurs and is now part of the international spirits group Diageo . The oldest and best known Pimm's liqueur is the Pimm's No. 1 ( Engl. "Pimm's Number One" [ pɪms nʌmbə wʌn ] = Pimms number one), a slightly bitter, kräutrig spicy liqueur gin basis with an alcohol content of 25% vol. It is mixed almost exclusively in cocktails , mainly with lemonade in Pimm's Cup , a summer drink named after the liqueur and especially popular in Great Britain .

history

The name for the liqueur brand was James Pimm (1798–1873), an English farmer's son who, however, enjoyed a higher education and settled in Lombard Street in London in 1823 or 1824 to act as a "shellfish monger" with oysters . He later opened a store nearby (No. 3 Poultry) called Pimm's Oyster Warehouse. The later restaurant called Pimm's Oyster Bar was located close to Buckingham Palace and the Bank of England and is said to have been frequented by the “better society” of London. As an accompaniment to the oysters, Pimm served a house cup, a mixed drink based on gin , as early as 1840 ; this is the forerunner of today's liqueur Pimm's No. 1.

However, the origin legend has been questioned on various occasions, in fact the drink goes back to Pimm's successor, Samel Morey, who named it after the name of the restaurant , which is now known as Pimm's Oyster Bar . Morey had been licensed to trade alcohol since 1860. At the time, it was not uncommon for traders to serve homemade spirits to mix with liqueurs and juices and to refer to the jugs or mugs in which they were sold as "cups". In the specialist literature of the 19th century, cups formed a large group among the mixed drinks common at the time. Dale DeGroff , who speaks of the time around 1840 in this context, sees a gin sling in the concentrate of the Pimm's Cup , and since the drink was spiced with herbal extracts - possibly with the first cocktail bitters imported to England - he could even matched a bittered sling . As such, namely a mixture of spirit, water, sugar and bitters, the then new word "cocktail" was defined in the United States in 1806 . The other varieties (No. 2 to No. 6) were later explicitly identified on the label as "Sling". The year 1859 is mentioned again and again as the start of sales for the Pimm's Cup . According to other sources, the cups are No. 2 and 3 had already been developed in 1851 and in that year the out-of-home sales began. What is certain is that the original product Pimm's No. 1 gin and was refined with various herbs and spices, including quinine , which is also found in tonic water . In any case, the restaurant changed hands several times (a certain Frederick Sawyer is mentioned, for example) until it was finally bought (probably in 1880) by the wine merchant, restaurateur and politician Horatio David Davies . Horatio Davies was later admitted to the nobility , was a member of parliament and mayor of London for the 1897 term . In addition to other restaurants that he took over, he also founded four other Pimm's branches. Towards the end of the 19th century, ice was also used in the preparation of mixed drinks in England.

Historic bottles with different types of Pimm's

In 1906 Sir Horatio Davies converted Pimm's into a private company (a kind of corporation) and began to market the beverage mixes on a large scale. In addition to Pimm's No. 1 with gin there was also Pimm's No. 2 (with whiskey ) and Pimm's No. 3 (with brandy ). The Pimm's Cups were soon known throughout the UK and beyond in the British Empire. Horatio Davies died in 1912, but his company was controlled by a family trust for 57 years after his death . In the 1920s in particular, Pimm's flourished and was also internationally successful, for example in the United States and Canada: David Embury mentioned the varieties Pimm's No. in the 1958 edition of his standard work The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, first published in 1948 . 1, No. 2 and No. 3.

After the Second World War, the range was expanded to include other types of Pimm's: the "Original Rum Sling" (No. 4), the "Original Rye Sling" (No. 5) and finally the "Original Vodka Sling" (No. 6). In 1967 all varieties were still available, in contrast to the traditional No. 1, however, the other products were not very successful commercially and were taken off the market in 1970 by the Distillers Company, which had since taken over the brand. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Pimm's brand got into a sales crisis. The Distillers Company was taken over by competitor Guinness plc in 1986 . In 1997, Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan plc to form the spirits group Diageo , in whose portfolio Pimm's is still to this day.

Products

Today only or again the versions based on gin (No. 1) and vodka (No. 6) are offered, the latter supposedly based on the recipe from 1840, but with vodka instead of gin. The recipes and exact ingredients of the Pimm's liqueurs are not known. Allegedly, Pimm's No. 1 contains orange liqueur, lemon peel, curry, cloves, herbs and various types of roots in addition to gin.

Pimm's No. 3 was named Pimm's No. 3 Winter Cup reintroduced with a different recipe. In addition, the products Pimm's Blackberry & Elderflower ( blackberry and elderflower ), Pimm's Strawberry & Mint (strawberry and mint ) and a cider cup are now available under the Pimm's brand .

Web links

Commons : Pimm's  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Simon Difford: Cocktails # 10. Odd Firm of Sin (self-published), London 2012, ISBN 978-0-9556276-2-0 , p. 375.
  2. ↑ See William Terrington: Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks. Collection of Recipes for 'Cups' and Other Compound Drinks. George Routledge and Sons, London and New York 1869; on the importance of cups in particular p. 156f.
  3. ^ Dale DeGroff : The Essential Cocktail. Clarkson Potter, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-307-40573-9 , pp. 162f.
  4. ↑ Helmut Adam, Jens Hasenbein, Bastian Heuser: Cocktailian. The manual of the bar. Tre Torri, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-941641-41-9 , p. 251.
  5. ↑ a b Kelly Magyarics: Pimm's Cup: the Wimbledon Cocktail. In: winemag.com. Archived from the original on April 18, 2005 ; accessed on August 3, 2018 . 20150418024805
  6. ^ David A. Embury: The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Reprint of 3rd edition (1958) with new forewords by Robert Hess and Audrey Saunders. 2nd Edition. Mud Puddle Books, New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-60311-164-5 (English), p. 315.
  7. ↑ Alex Natan: In England: The Secret of Pimm's. In: zeit.de . March 17, 1967, Retrieved July 5, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Guinness directors showed 'contempt for truth'. In: news.bbc.co.uk. November 28, 1997, accessed July 5, 2015 .
  9. ↑ PIMM'S - Diageo whets the appetite for the British cult aperitif. In: about-drinks.com. March 30, 2015, accessed July 5, 2015 . (Advertorial, based on manufacturer information).