How To Drink Like A President

President’s Day may be a three-day weekend for people, but for wine drinkers, it's also an opportunity to brush up on the history of our presidential imbibers.

Wine historians know some of this legacy: who was a teetotaler (George W. Bush and apparently the current White House occupant, who, ironically, owns a winery) and who enjoyed a tip of the bottle (too many mentions for a parenthetical).

They know who was stingy: Richard Nixon reportedly served guests cheap wines while he kept a bottle of Chateau Margaux swathed in a towel tableside for his own consumption. In his book, “Mint Juleps with Teddy Roosevelt: The Complete History of Presidential Drinking,” Mark Will-Weber notes Tricky Dick was known to drunk-dial major political figures late at night—what a prankster!

Aside from Nixon, a few others were a little sneaky about their habits. Herbert H. Hoover, like Nixon, was a Quaker, and also a wine collector who owned cellars in California and London. When the Mrs. dumped his precious wine collection at the onset of Prohibition, he enjoyed a tipple on the side while visiting friends at the Belgian embassy—considered foreign soil where Prohibition was ignored, writes Christopher Cumo in “The SAGE Encyclopedia of Alcohol: Social, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives.”