Cocktails were slow to make an appearance on Downton Abbey but make no mistake: the Crawleys love to drink. In season 1, Robert Crawley regularly enjoys Scotch, dinners begin and end with sherry and port, parties include alcoholic punches, and plenty of wine and Champagne is poured—but none of the Crawleys or their servants sips a cocktail. The fact is, drinking before dinner did not begin until the end of the First World War and so the steady creep of cocktails into Downton Abbey only starts in seasons 2 and 3, when Robert asks his mother, Violet, “Can I tempt you to one of these new cocktails?” At this point, fashionable members of London society were beginning their evenings with a cocktail, a custom Lady Rose implores Robert to adopt. She is an early enthusiast, and Lady Edith gladly raises a glass once she begins making regular trips to London. Happily for Lady Rose—and the rest of the family—over the course of the show’s remaining seasons, cocktails make more than a cameo appearance; they are, in fact, a mainstay of the household’s dining and entertaining protocol. Edith, in particular, as a young career woman and urbanite, drinks them a great deal, in her flat, in restaurants, and at Downton itself, where cocktails are well established by the final episode. It takes newcomer Henry Talbot, however, to introduce the cocktail shaker.
