Members of The Royal Family will have been counting down the days until Easter as they looked forward to their next big gathering. The family will come together today (Sunday, 20 April) to spend quality time with one another at Windsor Castle for the annual Easter Mattins Service
Every year, most members – including the King and Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales and their family, Zara and Mike Tindall, Peter Phillips, and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie and their families – come together for the church service at St George’s Chapel. Last year, Princess Anne, Prince Edward and the Duchess of Edinburgh were also in attendance for the celebration, and it’s likely that they will join in the fun again today.
In years gone by, the royal family have reportedly followed the service with a traditional roast lamb lunch back at the castle. Along with an Easter Sunday lunch, a festive Easter tipple is a must during the celebration, so what is King Charles’ drink of choice and how is it so different from the late Queen’s?
For his drink of choice, the King is said to be fond of a crisp gin and tonic or a Scotch whiskey. According to thedrinksbusiness.com, his favourite is apparently a Laphroaig, 15-year-old Scotch, which is described as “a pungent smoke-and-seaweed Islay dram” and has been the only ever single malt awarded the Prince of Wales’s Royal warrant, back in 1994.
The King might also be a partisan of pink gin as Buckingham Palace has launched a Coronation Gin made with raspberries grown as Windsor Castle to mark the event. The gin was described by the Royal Household as the “perfect accompaniment” to the Coronation.
Darren McGrady worked for the Royal Family for over 15 years and has frequently drawn back the curtain on what life was like serving one of the most famous families in the world.
Darren revealed that the late Queen, for celebrations, would choose to enjoy a glass of the sweet German white wine Gewürztraminer.
Gewürztraminer is described on Decanter as: “offering complex aromas, ranging from rose to apricot kernel and tropical fruits, together with pepper and sweet spices. Dried fruits and honey also appear when there’s noble rot.”
King Charles once took part in a martini-making session alongside actor Stanley Tucci and Italian mixologist Alessandro Palazzi. It was during a star-studded Italian-themed dinner, held ahead of the King and Queen’s state visit to Italy.
Queen Camilla, on the other hand, has quite the penchant for wine and even admitted: “Well, first of all, I love wine, but secondly, my father was in the wine business, so I was brought up as a child drinking wine and water rather like the French.”
This has been confirmed by her son, Tom Parker-Bowles, who told You Magazine in an interview that the Queen Consort’s desert island meal would probably be washed down with “a really good glass of red claret”.