Crossword for Victoria

A few weeks ago we got a message from Olivia in the "member-puzzles" channel of our Discord site...

"Just asking if any of you clever cluesmen would be willing/interested in doing a bespoke Quick Cryptic puzzle.  One of my sisters has a milestone birthday on Sept. 25th and I've been racking my brains what to get her.  My sister only does the QC - she thinks, wrongly, that she's not up to the 15x15.  I would be delighted to spring for a consignment of the beverage of your choice in return... or anything else within reason.  Absolutely no pressure!"

How could I resist?

I replied...

"Sounds fun. Happy to contribute and coordinate production. Some theme words to try and include would be good. "

With a bit of grid mangling I managed to get quite a few of the theme words in, and enlisted some help to collaborate on coming up with some clues. We had more than one clue to choose from for most of the answers and Olivia asked me to arbitrate as editor. You can find the result here on MyCrossword, here on Crossword.info or here as a PDF to print. Alternatively print the image below...

 Many thanks to Phil, Sawbill, Francois and Boltonwanderer for the the candidate clues and to John and David for acting as test solvers. The solution can and its explanation can be be found here.