"Sir Winston Churchill had a lifelong ‘attachment’ to Pol Roger champagne and insisted on enjoying the wine at the most dangerous and dark periods of wartime. He famously borrowed a slogan of Napoleon’s to describe his passion for this supremely invigorating champagne: "In defeat I need it, in victory I deserve it". Winston Churchill was born in 1874, the same year from which an outstanding Pol Roger vintage was created – a cuvée which was to provide the foundation for the brand’s reputation in England. Winston became a customer of Pol Roger for the first time when a Cabinet Minister and President of the Board of Trade. He ordered a supply of the 1895 vintage. By 1914 Pol Roger had become the champagne of people of prominence, and the 1906 vintage sealed this position, being consumed at many royal functions. Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, retained his loyalty to the brand. During the Second World War, Churchill maintained a stock of Pol Roger always at hand, even having a case loaded onto flights into foreign war zones, as both defeats and victories ‘justified’ its consumption. (Allied troops, after the liberation of Epernay and France in 1944 had special stocks of Pol Roger labeled and reserved for their use)." - Pol Roger
