Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Welcome to Criminalia, where it's
Speaker 1: pirate season. We'll be exploring the lives and motivations of
Speaker 1: some of the most notorious freebooters throughout history. I'm Maria
Speaker 1: Tremarqui and I'm Holly Fry. And Rachel Wall, who we're
Speaker 1: talking about in this episode, was probably born as Rachel
Speaker 1: Schmidt too devoutedly Presbyterian parents sometime in seventeen sixteen. She
Speaker 1: is unique because she is credited with being New England's
Speaker 1: only quote lady pirate, or, as she's been mentioned in
Speaker 1: some of the research that came up, the dread pirate
Speaker 1: Rachel sort of marvelous. She was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and she may also have been the first American born
Speaker 1: woman to become a pirate. But she most certainly was
Speaker 1: the last woman to be hanged in Boston, although the
Speaker 1: specific crime that landed her fate was not actually piracy,
Speaker 1: and that becomes an interesting twist in her story. Yes,
Speaker 1: certainly so. We're the lucky when it comes to Rachel
Speaker 1: Wall's life history, or at least parts of her history,
Speaker 1: and that's because before the end of her life, she
Speaker 1: wrote a piece called Life, Last Words and Dying Confession
Speaker 1: of Rachel Wall Right here, we want to emphasize two things. First,
Speaker 1: half of that headline is in all caps. And second,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that this confession was penned shortly before
Speaker 1: her execution. Will reference it throughout, But keep in mind
Speaker 1: it's it's not a journal, it's a document created at
Speaker 1: the end of her life when she knew her fate
Speaker 1: was sealed. Okay, before we get to the end of
Speaker 1: her life, though, let's talk about her younger years. Rachel
Speaker 1: was born into what she described in that document as
Speaker 1: a good family. She called her parents quote good and reputable.
Speaker 1: Her father was a farmer, but we do know that
Speaker 1: he was definitely a man quote of a very serious
Speaker 1: and devout turn of mind, and always made it his
Speaker 1: constant practice to perform family prayers in his house every
Speaker 1: morning and evening, and was very careful to call his
Speaker 1: children and family together every Sabbath day evening to hear
Speaker 1: the holy scriptures and other pious books read to them.
Speaker 1: And according to this written confession, which it's uh laid
Speaker 1: out as though she actually verbally gave it as a
Speaker 1: confession and someone else took it down just for clarity.
Speaker 1: But according to this confession, her parents gave her the
Speaker 1: moral foundation to lead a happy, crime free life. She said, quote,
Speaker 1: they gave me a good education and instructed me in
Speaker 1: the fundamental principles of the Christian religion, and taught me
Speaker 1: the fear of God. And if I had followed the
Speaker 1: good advice, I should never have come to this untimely fate.
Speaker 1: Rachel had three brothers and two sisters who were living
Speaker 1: at the time she left home. At least again, according
Speaker 1: to this document, they do not appear to have similarly
Speaker 1: been drawn into a life of crime, but we really
Speaker 1: don't hear about them. After Rachel left Carlisle, her family
Speaker 1: life wasn't enough to make Rachel happy, so she actually
Speaker 1: ended up leaving home at the age of sixteen and
Speaker 1: made her way to where she always said she was
Speaker 1: most comfortable and felt most at home, and that was
Speaker 1: the waterfront. We looked at maps. Depending on the waterfront
Speaker 1: you're talking about around Carlyle, that could be quite a
Speaker 1: walking journey, you know, as many as days. Several sources
Speaker 1: say she went to the waterfront. Whichever one that means,
Speaker 1: we know she went there, and that's where she met
Speaker 1: a man named George Wall, who made his living as
Speaker 1: a fisherman and who also would change the course of
Speaker 1: her life. The pair soon married, and they began traveling
Speaker 1: around the United States together, first of Philadelphia briefly, and
Speaker 1: then a few months in New York City, and eventually
Speaker 1: to Boston, where they settled. And in her confession, Rachel
Speaker 1: does make a point of clearing her parents name of
Speaker 1: any blame by stating that she did all of this
Speaker 1: without their consent. So it was not long after the
Speaker 1: Walls moved to Boston, however, that George left Rachel for
Speaker 1: time at sea. When the newlywed Rachel was questioned about
Speaker 1: her husband's whereabouts, she admitted she had no idea where
Speaker 1: he was. She would say, quote, he went off again
Speaker 1: and left me, and then would continue and where he
Speaker 1: is now I know not. It is actually now thought
Speaker 1: by historians that George was probably a privateer during the
Speaker 1: American Revolution, and that's how and when he observed the
Speaker 1: life of a pirate and decided that that was the
Speaker 1: life for him. To support herself while he was away,
Speaker 1: Rachel turned to one of two possible professions, depending which
Speaker 1: piece of her folklore you hear, so it's possible, yet unlikely,
Speaker 1: that she took a job as a barmaid. It is
Speaker 1: way more likely, especially because she's actually quoted talking about
Speaker 1: it in her confession, that she really took a job
Speaker 1: as domestic help in Boston's wealthy Beacon Hill neighborhood, and
Speaker 1: it was there that she was she said, quote very contented.
Speaker 1: George did eventually returned to his wife, and when he did,
Speaker 1: he began a campaign to get her to join the
Speaker 1: business of piracy with him. During her final confession, Rachel
Speaker 1: was quoted about that, saying, as soon as he came back,
Speaker 1: he enticed me to leave my service and take to
Speaker 1: bad company from which I might date my ruin. So
Speaker 1: at this point we're going to take a break for
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsor, and when we return, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about how Rachel and George began their life of piracy.
Speaker 1: So romantic, welcome back to Criminalia, all right, Coming up,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about everything from Blackbeard to Rachel's trial.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, some of the most notorious pirates,
Speaker 1: such as black Beard, Samuel Bellamy, and Captain Kidd were
Speaker 1: all known to travel in the waters off of Boston's sure,
Speaker 1: So it's believed that they came north to New England
Speaker 1: to trade their goods with merchants in Connecticut, New York,
Speaker 1: and you guessed it, Boston too. Not the only pirates
Speaker 1: in the area, obviously, and definitely not as famous. Rachel
Speaker 1: and George also sailed off the coast of New England,
Speaker 1: and legend says they stole a ship named the Essex
Speaker 1: to begin this journey together. It said they robbed as
Speaker 1: many as twelve ships and plundered and killed twenty four sailors.
Speaker 1: Their lowres suggests they made as much as six thousand
Speaker 1: dollars doing this, perhaps more, perhaps less. We haven't done
Speaker 1: this in a little bit, so hold on and remember,
Speaker 1: translating dollars to dollars over nearly two hundred fifty years
Speaker 1: is super sketchy. Don't quote these as real numbers, but
Speaker 1: here we go. The purchasing power of that six thousand
Speaker 1: dollars would be maybe about roughly equivalent to a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty thousand dollars in one and the amount they
Speaker 1: took in may have actually been as highest twelve thousand,
Speaker 1: which bear with us again, is somewhere possibly around the
Speaker 1: equivalent in purchasing power to more than two hundred seventy
Speaker 1: thousand dollars today, although there isn't any proof beyond her
Speaker 1: pre execution confession. According to the legends surrounding the Walls,
Speaker 1: they attacked vessels around the aisles of the shoals just
Speaker 1: off the coast of New Hampshire. In her confession, Rachel
Speaker 1: went into pretty good detail about how she and George
Speaker 1: worked as a team. They primarily worked after storms had hit,
Speaker 1: and they made use of the unique situation of having
Speaker 1: a woman on board to lorian victims. Through deception. Rachel
Speaker 1: would stand on the deck or the mast of the
Speaker 1: ship and pretend to be the lady in distress. She
Speaker 1: would scream for help until nearby sailors came to her rescue,
Speaker 1: and that's when George and his crew would plunder their
Speaker 1: ships and murder their crew. In two though, tragedy struck
Speaker 1: when George and most of his crew drowned at sea
Speaker 1: during a storm. Worm Rachel, as well as a number
Speaker 1: of the crew, were rescued from the shipwreck, and it
Speaker 1: is at that point that she gave up piracy and
Speaker 1: returned to Boston. Back in Boston, Rachel turned her work
Speaker 1: from piracy back to domestic help. She did, though, keep
Speaker 1: her hand in the game a bit by committing petty crimes.
Speaker 1: It said she could never shake her love of the
Speaker 1: sea or her love of looting. In fact, she's known
Speaker 1: to have sneaked aboard ships docked in Boston Harbor. She
Speaker 1: described one of these outings on Long Wharf in Boston, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: sometime in the spring of seventy seven, not being able
Speaker 1: to ascertain the exact time, I happened to go on
Speaker 1: board a ship lying at the Long Morph in Boston.
Speaker 1: The captain's name I cannot recollect, but think he was
Speaker 1: a Frenchman. On my entering the cabin, the door of
Speaker 1: which not being fastened, and finding the captain and mate
Speaker 1: asleep in their beds, I hunted about for plunder and
Speaker 1: discovered under the captain's head a black silk hank or
Speaker 1: chief containing upwards of thirty pounds in gold crowns and
Speaker 1: small change, on which I immediately seized the booty and
Speaker 1: decamped therewith as quick as possible. I like that she
Speaker 1: was stealthy enough to steal money from under a man's head.
Speaker 1: Under his head, so I actually found two versions of
Speaker 1: this little story, and they had all the same basic
Speaker 1: information in them, and I think the last like maybe
Speaker 1: one or two sentences were even exactly the same. It
Speaker 1: was missing a few things, like in the spring of
Speaker 1: sevent seven. Um, it was missing lying at the long wharf,
Speaker 1: and it was missing that he was a Frenchman. So
Speaker 1: it was pretty much the same. But I thought that
Speaker 1: this one had some Besides, I liked that she said
Speaker 1: she seized the booty. This was not the truncated version
Speaker 1: of her quote, which I thought was pretty good. It
Speaker 1: was nice to be able to see two versions. Um. So,
Speaker 1: moving on back to her confession, racial states in that
Speaker 1: confession quote in short, the many small crimes I have
Speaker 1: committed are too numerous to mention in is sheet. But
Speaker 1: in addition to the theft we just mentioned, she also
Speaker 1: recounts two other specific crimes, which she said she included
Speaker 1: quote as a solemn warning to the living of my sex,
Speaker 1: at least especially to those whom they were immediately concerned. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of those is this account of stealing from yet
Speaker 1: another ship's captain, which goes quote At another time. I
Speaker 1: think it was about the year seventy eight, I broke
Speaker 1: into a sloop on board of which I was acquainted.
Speaker 1: Lying at Dones Wharf in this town, and finding the
Speaker 1: captain and every hand on board asleep in the cabin
Speaker 1: and steerage, I looked round to see what I could
Speaker 1: help myself to when I aspied a silver watch hanging
Speaker 1: over the captain's head, which I pocketed. I also took
Speaker 1: a pair of silver buckles out of the captain's shoes.
Speaker 1: I likewise made free with a parcel of small change
Speaker 1: for pocket money to make myself marry among my evil companions,
Speaker 1: and made my escape without being discovered. And here's why
Speaker 1: Rachel's confession should be taken with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: So in it, she confessed she attempted to break her
Speaker 1: husband out of jail by using what is now pretty
Speaker 1: much one of the oldest tricks in the book. By
Speaker 1: this time, Rachel's confession seems to have been more a
Speaker 1: work of fiction or at least an exaggeration, But we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about it anyway because it's really an
Speaker 1: interesting part of her legend. So here's the problem. Her
Speaker 1: husband George in this story was in jail, but we
Speaker 1: know he died in a shipwreck in Sight two. So
Speaker 1: what's real, and what's not real is a little bit
Speaker 1: blended here. Right. It's also possible just that she has
Speaker 1: a bad grasp of calendar dates. I was just going
Speaker 1: to say that she earlier mentioned in her confession she
Speaker 1: couldn't remember the year of something that happened, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe that's true. Right, So it may be true, it
Speaker 1: may not be true. We're going to tell it. It's
Speaker 1: part of legend. It's a pretty good one. So this,
Speaker 1: this possibly fictional part of her confession states that Rachel
Speaker 1: had tools to escape baked into a loaf of bread
Speaker 1: and had that bread sent to George. She wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: sometime about the year seventeen eighty five, my husband being
Speaker 1: confined in the jail in this place for these I
Speaker 1: had a mind to try an expedient to extricate him
Speaker 1: from his imprisonment, which was to have a brick loaf
Speaker 1: baked in which I contrived to enclose a number of
Speaker 1: tools such as a saw, file, et cetera, in order
Speaker 1: to assist him to make his escape, which was handed
Speaker 1: to him by the jailer in person, who little suspected
Speaker 1: such a trick was playing with him. However, it liked
Speaker 1: to have had the desired effect the crafty contriver intended
Speaker 1: for by means of this stratagem. The poor culprit Wall
Speaker 1: had busily employed himself with the implements that his kind
Speaker 1: helpmate had in this curious manner conveyed to him, and
Speaker 1: had nearly affected his design before it was discovered. So
Speaker 1: before he could dig his way out, they were onto him.
Speaker 1: The part that I really like about what she put
Speaker 1: in the brick loaf of baked bread was the saw
Speaker 1: just they saw that I imagine is very small because
Speaker 1: it goes in a loaf of bread um, And I
Speaker 1: just think to myself, Wow, I'd take a long time.
Speaker 1: Rachel's life changed again on the evening of March eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine. According to her confession, she was walking home
Speaker 1: from work and we quote without design to injure any person.
Speaker 1: She was she continued, quote surprised when the crime was
Speaker 1: laid to her charge. And here's what happened. Seventeen year
Speaker 1: old Margaret Bender, who had also been walking on that road,
Speaker 1: accused Rachel of stealing a bonnet, shoes and buckles, and
Speaker 1: possibly a few shillings to violently off her body. There's
Speaker 1: also an odd and highly unlikely version of this story
Speaker 1: that suggests that she and that she is Rachel, tried
Speaker 1: to ripped out Margaret's tongue. That sounds a little like
Speaker 1: the exaggeration of gossip going around, but we don't know
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, the report of the crime that was
Speaker 1: published in the papers about two weeks later definitely leaned
Speaker 1: toward Margaret's version of the story. That was reported as follows.
Speaker 1: As a woman was walking alone, she was met by
Speaker 1: another woman who seized hold of her and stopped her
Speaker 1: mouth with her handkerchief and tore from her head her
Speaker 1: bonnet and cushion, after which she flung her down, took
Speaker 1: her shoes and buckles, and then fled. She was soon
Speaker 1: after overtaken and committed to jail. Rachel did run from
Speaker 1: the police, but she was quickly arrested and jailed for
Speaker 1: highway robbery, which is robbery that's committed you could guess
Speaker 1: on or near a public road. It was during this
Speaker 1: time that Rachel came clean about her life of piracy
Speaker 1: and all it entailed. But the one thing she always
Speaker 1: maintained was her innocence in regard to that bonnet. Of
Speaker 1: all the acts of piracy, Rachel had been involved with
Speaker 1: her arrest record was actually just for things like petty theft.
Speaker 1: This arrest was for highway robbery, which meant that she
Speaker 1: could be executed if found guilty. She pleaded innocent, and
Speaker 1: we quote as to the crime of robbery, I am
Speaker 1: entirely innocent. To the truth of this declaration, I appealed
Speaker 1: to that God before whom I must shortly appear. She
Speaker 1: was tried by a jury and only men could serve
Speaker 1: on juries at this time before the Supreme Judicial Court
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts in August of seventy nine, and Rachel was
Speaker 1: found guilty. Not to take anything away from Rachel's life,
Speaker 1: we would be remiss if we didn't mention how famous
Speaker 1: those who participated in her trial would become. For example,
Speaker 1: Rachel's life was happening at exactly the same time that
Speaker 1: George Washington, a founding father of the United States, was
Speaker 1: leading troops to victory in the American Revolution. But his
Speaker 1: is not the only name that you will recognize from
Speaker 1: this time period and specifically from Rachel's trial. Right, So,
Speaker 1: the presiding judge was William Cushing, who went on to
Speaker 1: become one of the first U. S Supreme Court justices.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 1: Her court appointed lawyer, Christopher Gore, not only helped ratify
Speaker 1: the Constitution, he also became the first U. S Attorney
Speaker 1: from Massachusetts. During trial, he requested, and we quote, that
Speaker 1: sentence of death might be given against the said Rachel Wall,
Speaker 1: the prisoner at the bar, and her death warrant. And
Speaker 1: this one, I thought was really kind of the most interesting,
Speaker 1: carried what may be considered the most famous signature in
Speaker 1: US history, and that's John Hancock, who was the first
Speaker 1: governor of Massachusetts at the time. I wonder if it
Speaker 1: was massive and overtook the document. I wondered the same thing. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I need a page for my last name. We are
Speaker 1: going to take a break here and have a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsor, and when we come back, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about Rachel's conviction of highway robbery. Again, not
Speaker 1: Pyras sing. Welcome back to Criminal Lea. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: how Rachel requested to be hanged like a pirate. So
Speaker 1: here's one thing about Rachel. She never denied that she
Speaker 1: was a criminal. She never denied that she had been
Speaker 1: arrested for petty theft, for larceny. She did, while technically
Speaker 1: no longer a pirate, loot a few important people that
Speaker 1: included Perez Morton, who was a revolutionary patriot, a friend
Speaker 1: of John Adams, and a man who would become a
Speaker 1: powerful lawyer and future Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
Speaker 1: But this accusation of highway robbery stuck, and she pleaded
Speaker 1: not guilty. She always said she didn't do it, so
Speaker 1: if hanging would be her execution, which it was, she
Speaker 1: believed and requested that she be hanged as a pirate.
Speaker 1: She went on to argue that she shouldn't be executed
Speaker 1: or sentenced for this crime of highway robbery. She maintained
Speaker 1: her innocence, saying, quote witnesses who swore against me are
Speaker 1: certainly mistaken, she said, but she continued, as a dying person,
Speaker 1: I freely forgive them. She quote hoped her awful and
Speaker 1: untimely fate will be a solemn warning and caution to everyone,
Speaker 1: but more particularly to the youth, especially those of my
Speaker 1: own sex. There were three hangings on the day that
Speaker 1: Rachel was executed, including William Smith and William Dunigan. All
Speaker 1: three had been convicted and sentenced to death for highway robbery.
Speaker 1: Rachel was the final execution of the day and was
Speaker 1: hanged at the Great Elm in Boston Commons. It's reported
Speaker 1: that there were thousands of bystanders on hand for the event,
Speaker 1: and it was reported that quote everyone present was ready
Speaker 1: for the morning's gruesome excitement. When Rachel's time came, she
Speaker 1: jumped out off the edge to her death without help.
Speaker 1: You made me wondering, as Rachel did. Was hanging really
Speaker 1: the punishment for allegedly stealing a bonnet? Yes? Actually, well
Speaker 1: it could be, so we'll do a really quick overview
Speaker 1: of that. The Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter had previously been
Speaker 1: revoked by the King of England, and that meant that
Speaker 1: Massachusetts was totally free to establish its own laws based
Speaker 1: on court judgments and jury opinions. Additionally, by the end
Speaker 1: of the eighteenth century, the ruling class in Massachusetts believed
Speaker 1: there was a massive and unprecedented crime wave just occurring
Speaker 1: around them all the time, and their solution was to
Speaker 1: be swift and merciless. They may have actually been exaggerating
Speaker 1: that crime problem, but their solution just the same was
Speaker 1: capital punishment, and this law could mean hanging for the
Speaker 1: theft of a bonnet. It could also, unfortunately permit the
Speaker 1: execution of any woman with a baby born outside of
Speaker 1: marriage to be hanged, while the man involved was almost
Speaker 1: always exempt from punishment. The time and place is interesting here. Okay,
Speaker 1: we don't intend to gloss over the importance of the
Speaker 1: American Revolution, of course, but for the context of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about today, that's the setting for Rachel's story
Speaker 1: in Boston. So we're gonna talk just a little nip
Speaker 1: about the Revolution. Battles were fought from Quebec all the
Speaker 1: way down to the Carolina's. Basically everyone along the Eastern
Speaker 1: seaboard was recovering from battle, either through participating or it
Speaker 1: just being part of their world. In Massachusetts, many residents
Speaker 1: have become stressed and distressed about any sort of lawlessness
Speaker 1: or crime. There was a lot going on in Massachusetts
Speaker 1: at the time, and in particular in Boston and the
Speaker 1: surrounding area. The Siege of Boston, which began the American
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the battles of
Speaker 1: Lexington and Conquered you know, these battles and all of
Speaker 1: these had just completely exhausted the population. To contextualize where
Speaker 1: Rachel's story and her execution fit in the larger area.
Speaker 1: By this time, in Massachusetts, juris had hanged a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty seven women over two hundred years, and that
Speaker 1: included famously women accused of being witches in the Salem
Speaker 1: witch Trials, which happened between six and six Though not
Speaker 1: all of the more than two hundred alleged witches were executed,
Speaker 1: that brief period marks a notable concentration of the total
Speaker 1: number of women who had been put to death for
Speaker 1: crimes in the colony and in the state. The number
Speaker 1: of women hanged in Massachusetts after the witch trials and
Speaker 1: before Rachel Wall came along, dwindled for about a century.
Speaker 1: Rachel was not only the last woman hanged in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: she also became a unique outlier, and that she had
Speaker 1: not been accused of being a witch and was one
Speaker 1: of the last that could claim that to be hanged
Speaker 1: there that is true. She died on Thursday October eight,
Speaker 1: sevent eighty nine, when she was twenty nine years old.
Speaker 1: Word of her death was announced through various newspapers. In
Speaker 1: the plight of her life was memorialized as a woodcut
Speaker 1: illustration of her corpse dangling from the gallows while she
Speaker 1: lost her life for theft, at least on paper, we
Speaker 1: wonder if it sort of seems like she was really
Speaker 1: being tried for her life of piracy. Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 1: It's hard to determine the politics at hand and her trial.
Speaker 1: We do know that in her final hours, Rachel went
Speaker 1: to her death asking for mercy on her soul, completing
Speaker 1: her confession with we quote and now into the hands
Speaker 1: of Almighty God, I commit my soul relying on his
Speaker 1: mercy through the merits and mediation of my redeemer, and
Speaker 1: die an unworthy member of the Presbyterian Church in the
Speaker 1: twenty nine year of my age. Alright, so Holly, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna come and meet you in the groggery, and I
Speaker 1: hope the grogory has a lot of nutmeg. Today the
Speaker 1: gregory is actually nutmeg free. I'm sorry to disappoint you.
Speaker 1: You ran out, That's okay, but there is a little
Speaker 1: bit of autumnal fun going on. Well that's really what
Speaker 1: I want in thinking about this story and what might
Speaker 1: be a good way to honor Rachel. I wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of recognize that she was living in New England
Speaker 1: at a time when ciders and hard ciders were very popular.
Speaker 1: But it's also I wanted to do a little extra
Speaker 1: autumnal twist, so because she did die in October, and
Speaker 1: because we're we're at that time of year ourselves, and
Speaker 1: because I always have autumn flavored things in my house
Speaker 1: year round anyway. So this is a cocktail called the
Speaker 1: Hanged Woman, and it is very simple and to my palette,
Speaker 1: dangerously delicious. You're gonna start with a champagne coupe or
Speaker 1: a flute, your preference. I prefer a coupe for this.
Speaker 1: A splash of pumpkin syrup. If you want to measure it,
Speaker 1: I would say about a half an ounce, but I
Speaker 1: just kind of pour in a splash, and then it
Speaker 1: is three ounce of hard cider, and then you top
Speaker 1: it with three ounces of champagne. And you want a
Speaker 1: sweeter champagne. You don't want to really dry one for this.
Speaker 1: This is so stinking delicious. I don't even know what
Speaker 1: to do with myself, and I want to guzzle it,
Speaker 1: and that is not good to me. It would be
Speaker 1: like a perfect little celebration toast drink um. I love
Speaker 1: a champagne cocktail anyway, but this one is shockingly good.
Speaker 1: I am not a hard cider drinker by nature. Cider
Speaker 1: is just not my jam boy. I like it in
Speaker 1: this iteration. Now, the thing that's nice about this is
Speaker 1: that it's really easy to do a one to one
Speaker 1: alcohol free version. So you just do a non alcoholic
Speaker 1: cider and a bit of ginger ale. I would actually
Speaker 1: do like a sugar free or a low sugar ginger
Speaker 1: ale there um, so you don't get too cloying lee sweet,
Speaker 1: and keep the pumpkin syrup because that's that's easy, and
Speaker 1: then like sip away because it's real delicious. I mean,
Speaker 1: the non alcoho holly version would be great for like
Speaker 1: a kid's party, even if you wanted to like serve
Speaker 1: them something that felt fancy, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: remember when I was a kid, I always did the
Speaker 1: like pretend cocktails. I think a lot of kids do.
Speaker 1: But you know, ideally you don't want to start your
Speaker 1: children drinking so um. Again, this is one that I'm
Speaker 1: going to make in large quantities for parties, but in
Speaker 1: both the mock tail version and the cocktail version, because yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the ones that you bring to the show
Speaker 1: that are clearly some of your favorites. You came on
Speaker 1: this morning and you were like, I love this drink,
Speaker 1: so like I knew that it was going to be
Speaker 1: a good one. I do. I love it and it's
Speaker 1: we we have gotten in the habit of talking about
Speaker 1: my husband's reactions to drink, since he is not a drinker.
Speaker 1: He's a good litmus test. Yes, and he quite liked
Speaker 1: this one, So that's a shocking and delightful endorsement as
Speaker 1: a good sign. Did he drink both both versions? No,
Speaker 1: he only he only tried the cocktail version. Excellent, So
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure the mocktail version would be equally
Speaker 1: delicious for him because it was equally delicious for me. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I said, I'm gonna make a ton of these
Speaker 1: this fall because it's perfect. So hopefully you find a
Speaker 1: reason to celebrate and raise a glass, whether it is
Speaker 1: champagne and hard cider based or otherwise. We hope that
Speaker 1: this automo is treating you well. I want to thank
Speaker 1: everybody for once again spending time with us today, and
Speaker 1: we will meet you right back here with another pirate
Speaker 1: next week. Criminalia is a production of Shonda Land Audio
Speaker 1: in partnership with I Heart Radio for more podcasts from
Speaker 1: Shonda land Audio. Please visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.