If Murphy's Law operates, you will read this in bright spring sunshine, but I'm writing with snow driving against the house and cars slithering alarmingly on the icy road. I don't drink and drive a computer at the same time, but the thought of a warming, rich barley wine later in the day has a powerful appeal.
The craft-brewing revolution in Britain has rekindled interest in beer styles that had either disappeared or been sidelined by bigger brewers. Strong beers such as barley wine have been further boosted by the revival of bottled beer, sales of which are increasing by more than 10% a year.
Once a month I go to the farmers' market in Hatfield where the Chiltern Brewery from Aylesbury has a stand. There I can pick up a bottle of Bodgers Barley Wine, which measures 8.5% on the Richter Scale.
Many people expect beers of that strength to be dauntingly dark, but Bodgers is brewed using just pale malt and has a luscious dark gold appeal. It has a rich, ripe and mellow fruitiness but any sweetness is offset by the generous use of two varieties of English hops, Fuggles and Goldings, which add spicy and peppery notes to the beer.
The interest in barley wine has crossed the Atlantic. Several of the new-wave American craft brewers produce barley wine, notably Old Foghorn from the Anchor Brewery in San Francisco and Big Foot from the Sierra Nevada Brewery in the same state. Further north, the BridgePort Brewery in Portland, Oregon, makes an annual vintage barley wine named Old Knucklehead. A knucklehead is the American version of the British bonehead and means a chump. Nevertheless, every year prominent citizens of Portland agree to have their face on the label of the latest vintage. One year, when the Mayor of Portland graced the label, he was asked if he minded being called a knucklehead. "It's a lot better than being called Bud," he retorted. I'll drink to that.
The noted American brewer and beer writer Garrett Oliver claims that barley wine didn't exist in the US and had to be introduced from Britain because the Americans never had an aristocracy. I would dispute that. George Washington and his fellow revolutionaries lived like country gentlemen in large mansions and several of them brewed at home. In modern times, you would hardly have called the Kennedys, the Kerrys or the Bushes "trailer trash".
But Garrett is right to point out that the origins of barley wine in Britain are aristocratic. For centuries, the English were at war with the French and the nobility in this country felt it was their patriotic duty to refuse to drink French Claret and Burgundy and to consume the "wine of the country", our home-grown ales.
To make up the shortfall, the English aristocracy wanted ales with body and alcohol. In some cases, commercial brewers supplied the households of the rich with strong ales, but the landed gentry had their own small brewhouses, often attached to the kitchens, where beer was made.
In her fascinating book Country House Brewing in England 1500-1900, Pamela Seabrook describes in detail how beer was made on a domestic scale. Usually the butler was in charge of beer making and a training manual for butlers in 1820 emphasised the importance of brewhouse work: "The keys of the wine and ale cellars are specially kept by him, and the management of the wine, the keeping of the stock book, and also of ale in stock, or in brewing, are in his particular charge. This duty he generally performs in the morning before he is dressed to receive company. While these duties and those of brewing are in hand, he leaves the parlour and waiting duties to the under-butler and footman."
That's what I call getting your priorities right. These strong beers, of around 10% or 12%, were variously known as October beers, Dorchester ales or malt liquors, but they were replaced by the term barley wine as the English aristocracy proved to the French they could make an alcohol that would rival anything from France.
That noble tradition is long gone and now it's the Bodgers of the beer world that are flying the flag forbarley wine.