M ixing alcohol with caffeine has thrown up some illustrious drinks over the years: the Cuba Libre, the caffe corretto and the vodka Red Bull. No combination of alcohol and caffeine, however, has proved as notorious as buckfast, a drink that is credited with almost supernatural powers of destruction.
Nor is it really a wine, based as it is on mistella — unfermented grape juice fortified with ethanol. It was created in the s by Benedictine monks who, fleeing persecution in France, came to Buckfast Abbey in Devon. These may somewhat contradict the folksy image the monks like to portray, but they are completely normal food additives.
Scottish politicians kick up a fuss about it on a semi-regular basis, but as politicians tend to be pretty fond of pointing and shouting at easy targets, it's easy to wonder if their concerns are legit. To find out, I made a Freedom of Information request to the Scottish Police Service asking how frequently Buckfast was mentioned in crime reports.
So I concentrated on the area that contains the so-called "Buckie Triangle" of Airdrie, Coatbridge and Cumbernauld where the stuff is particularly popular and the rest of the Greater Glasgow area where booze and violence in general are just really popular. As this whole area was covered by the Strathclyde Police up until recently, I was able to ask them how often Buckfast cropped up in crime reports.
As it turned out, it cropped up a lot. The trend shows no sign of abating and is shaping up to be a particularly epic year for Buckie-fuelled crime sprees, with 2, references already recorded by the end of August. If you're looking for evidence to support the theory that Buckfast makes young people commit crime, the stats are pretty compelling.
True to stereotypical form, 58 percent of the perpetrators involved in the Buckie crimes were aged between 16 and A survey conducted at Polmont Young Offenders Institution in had similarly striking results. Of the centre's young resident crims, 41 percent declared Buckfast to be their favourite tipple. Of those who'd been drunk at the time of their crime, 43 percent had been drinking Buckfast. The Wetherspoons in Coatbridge — one of the few places in Greater Glasgow where people can't drink Buckfast.
What was even more surprising, researchers noted, was that Buckfast was not mentioned by any respondents from some other large and densely populated parts of the country, such as Tayside and Edinburgh. So why do the people of Greater Glasgow love Buckie so much?
So I concentrated on the area that contains the so-called Buckie Triangle of Airdrie, Coatbridge, and Cumbernauld where the stuff is particularly popular and the rest of the Greater Glasgow area where booze and violence in general are really popular. As this whole area was covered by the Strathclyde Police up until recently, I was able to ask them how often Buckfast cropped up in crime reports.
As it turned out, it cropped up a lot. The trend shows no sign of abating, and is shaping up to be a particularly epic year for Buckie-fuelled crime sprees, with 2, references already recorded by the end of August.
If you're looking for evidence to support the theory that Buckfast makes young people commit crime, the stats are pretty compelling. Just under 12 percent of these reports involved either "petty crime" or what SPS categorizes as a Group 1 crime, which includes the most vicious varieties of violence such as murder, attempted murder, serious assault, and abduction. True to stereotypical form, 58 percent of the perpetrators involved in the Buckie crimes were between 16 and 25 years old.
A survey conducted at Scotland's Polmont Young Offenders Institution in had similarly striking results. Forty-one percent of the young people locked up there declared Buckfast to be their favorite brew, and 43 percent of those who'd been drunk at the time of their crime had been drinking Buckfast. The Wetherspoons in Coatbridge—one of the few places in Greater Glasgow where people can't drink Buckfast.
What was even more surprising, researchers noted, was that Buckfast was not mentioned by any respondents from some other large and densely populated parts of the country, such as Tayside and Edinburgh.
So why do the people of Greater Glasgow love Buckie so much? In an attempt to find out, I decided to enter the Buckie Triangle. On a Friday evening, I arrived in the misleadingly named Coatbridge Sunnyside Station on a train full of drunk teenagers singing soccer songs and similarly drunk fat middle-aged men also singing soccer songs.
The walk to downtown—past local landmarks like the spiritualist church and a shopping center—was pretty much as you'd expect from northern Scotland: everything was gray, girls wearing practically no clothes were calling guys hanging out of car windows wankers, and kids were drinking in the late-summer drizzle. Buckie is very well liked in Coatbridge.
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