SHERRY.
Commentators have puzzled themselves to find out Falstaff's sherries sack: there can be no doubt but that it was dry sherry, and the French word sec dry, corrupted into sack. In a poem printed in 1619, sack and sherry are noted throughout as synonymous, every stanza of twelve ending—
Give me sack, old sack, boys,
To make the muses merry,
The life of mirth, and the joy of the earth,
Is a cup of old sherry.