Saturated Republican put away bottles (7)
I believe the answer is:
drowned
'saturated' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'republican put away bottles' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'republican' could be 'r' (abbreviation) and 'r' is present in the answer.
The remaining letters 'downed' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for drowned that I've seen before include "Suffocated in water" , "Died by submersion" , "Submerged, flooded" , "Lost at sea" , "Died underwater" .)