The first of our cocktails this evening is the Pimm’s Cup, perhaps the quintessential English summer cocktail. Using Pimm’s No. 1 Cup as a base it combines traditional white (clear) lemonade and a variety of fruit slices.
Pimm’s No. 1 Cup is an English brand of gin-based fruit cup, first produced in 1823 by James Pimm as an aid to digestion. He servded it in a small tankard known as a “No. 1 Cup”, hence its subsequent name, in his oyster bar in the City of London, near the Bank of England.
Pimm’s is most popular in England, particularly southern England. It is one of the two staple drinks at the Wimbledon tennis tournament, the Chelsea Flower Show, the Henley Royal Regatta and the Glyndebourne Festival Opera – the other being champagne. The first Pimm’s Bar opened at the Wimbledon tournament in 1971; every year, over 80,000 pints of Pimm’s cocktail are sold to spectators. Along with champagne, it has been declared one of two official drinks of Wimbledon, and it has also gained popularity among British universities. A Pimm’s is also a standard cocktail at British and American polo matches.
The brand experienced a revival in the early 2000s following a 2003 advertising campaign, which featured a humorous classic upper-class “Hooray Henry” character called Harry Fitzgibbon-Sims (portrayed by Alexander Armstrong) with the catchphrase “It’s Pimm’s o’clock!”,[14] somewhat mocking their own traditional advertising and appeal. Diageo’s 2010 campaign featured a more diverse range of characters representing different elements of the Pimm’s cocktail (Pimm’s No.1 being an Englishman in red and white blazer, lemonade being three young women in yellow, ice represented by a mature man), coming together to the theme tune of 1970s British television show The New Avengers.
Pimm’s – from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
