Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Gladstone n.

[Prime Minister William Gladstone’s reduction, in 1860, of the duty on French wine]

cheap claret; also attrib.

1870
18701880
1885
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, , [UK]Hotten Sl. Dict.
[UK]Besant & Rice Golden Butterfly I 170: Claret certainly good, too – none of your Gladstone tap; sherry probably rather coarse.
A. Birrell Obiter Dicta 86: To make him unbosom himself over a bottle of Gladstone claret in a tavern in Leicester Square [F&H].