Showing posts with label Belfast Sparkling Cider. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Belfast Sparkling Cider. Show all posts

Jun 29, 2012

Belfast Sparkling Cider

This drink found in many Chinese restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, dates back to the Gold Rush of 1849. According to the story, gold prospectors and sailors would frequent San Francisco’s bar scene in search of a good time.

The sailors treated the bar girls to what they thought was French champagne, but which was actually Belfast Sparkling Cider, a lightly sweetened drink introduced to the region by Irish refugees who immigrated to the US during the potato famine.

Ship captains apparently paid the bar girls to play along and watched their sailors become intoxicated to the point that it wasn’t a struggle to get them back to sea.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, it can be found in almost every large Chinese restaurant in San Francisco and to retailers throughout Chinatown. Belfast is especially popular in the month of the Chinese New Year.