Cocktail Lore

There probably are as many versions of the origins of the classic cocktails as there are classic cocktails themselves. Some are clouded in a history long since forgotten or only remembered through a haze – perhaps induced by the libation itself. Others have multiple simultaneous parents of equal merit such that even King Solomon couldn't derive the authentic originator. That's want makes these stories so much fun – some history, enhanced with some exaggeration and mixed with a muddle of pure fiction and the story of these cocktails' origins can be as tasty as the drinks themselves.

Thee history sited below is our favorite version of the origin of these great creations – feel free to enjoy them or object to them – but do either with a great cocktail in hand.

The Martinez

One of the oldest cocktails enjoying a renaissance it is often heralded as the original, though it bears little resemblance to its dry modern cousin. Popular theory suggests it evolved from a cocktail called the Martinez served at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco sometime in the early 1860s, which people frequented before taking an evening ferry to the nearby town of Martinez. Alternatively, the people of Martinez say the drink was first created by a bartender in their town.

The original Martinez used sweet vermouth, giving it a deep auburn appearance, as the primary ingredient with gin in the minority and it included Maraschino liqueur and bitters.

Hugo’s Aviation Cocktail

The Aviation was created by Hugo Ensslin, head bartender at the Hotel Wallick in New York, in the early twentieth century. The first published recipe for the drink appeared in Ensslin's 1916 Recipes for Mixed Drinks. Ensslin's recipe called for El Bart gin, lemon juice, maraschino, and crème de violette, a violet liqueur which gives the cocktail a pale sky-blue color.

Harry Craddock's influential Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) omitted the crème de violette, calling for a mixture of two-thirds dry gin, one-third lemon juice, and two dashes of maraschino. Many later bartenders have followed Craddock's lead, leaving out the difficult-to-find violet liqueur.

The Sazerac

Around 1850, Sewell T. Taylor sold his bar, The Merchants Exchange Coffee House, and went into the imported liquor business. He began to import a brand of cognac named Sazerac-de-Forge et Fils. At the same time, Aaron Bird took over the Merchants Exchange and changed its name to the Sazerac House and began serving the "Sazerac Cocktail," made with Taylor's Sazerac cognac, absinthe and, legend has it, the bitters being made down the street by a local druggist, Antoine Amedie Peychaud. The Sazerac House changed hands several times and around 1870 Thomas Handy took over as proprietor. Around this time the primary ingredient changed from cognac to rye whiskey due to the phylloxera epidemic in Europe that devastated France's wine grape crops. At some point before his death in 1889, Handy recorded the recipe for cocktail and the drink made its first printed appearance in William T. "Cocktail Bill" Boothby's 1908 edition of his "The World's Drinks and How to Mix Them, though this recipe calls for Selner Bitters, not Peychaud's. During the time that absinthe was banned, it was replaced by various anise-flavored spirits, including the locally-produced Herbsaint. Fortunately that ill-conceived decision has been reversed and the absinthe is back!

The Pegu Club Cocktail

Among all these far-flung outposts of the British Empire, few were farther flung than Rangoon's Pegu Club, right there at the corner of Prome Road and Newlyn Road, not half a mile from the Parade Ground. Like all of its ilk, the Pegu Club had a bar, and like all such bars, this one had its house cocktail. Unlike the Muthaiga Country Club and the Ootacamund Club, though, the Pegu Club managed to insert its — a delightful and refreshing combination of gin (naturally), lime juice, orange curaçao, and a couple of other thises and thats — into the annals of mixology. As master mixologist Harry Craddock observed in 1930, the Pegu Club Cocktail "has travelled, and is asked for, around the world." We're not sure precisely when it was invented, but it had to be before 1927.

The Ramos Gin Fizz

The Ramos Gin Fizz has managed to outlast every drink fad for the past 117 years, ever since it was first presented to an appreciative public by Henry C. Ramos back in 1888. Ramos debuted this drink at his Imperial Cabinet saloon, located on the corner of Fravier and Carondelet streets in New Orleans, but the drink cemented its reputation at the bar Ramos purchased in 1907, The Stag, opposite the Gravier Street entrance to the St. Charles Hotel. At The Stag, the drink quickly became an emblematic New Orleans cocktail. Stanley Clisby Arthur writes that at The Stag, “the corps of busy shaker boys behind the bar was one of the sights of the town during Carnival, and in the 1915 Mardi Gras, 35 shaker boys nearly shook their arms off, but were still unable to keep up with the demand.”

With a following such as this, it’s not surprising that Ramos kept the recipe for his fizz a closely guarded secret. But legend has it that upon the enactment of Prohibition, Ramos decided to freely distribute his recipe. Perhaps, as Charles H. Baker, Jr., speculates in The Gentleman’s Companion, Ramos did this because he was “thinking that the formula, like any history dealing with the dead arts, should be engraved on the tablets of history;” or, as has also been suggested, Ramos released his recipe as an act of civil disobedience in an effort to subvert the Volstead Act, hoping that the curious masses would seek to sidestep the law in order to create this legendary drink for themselves.

The “Authentic” Daiquiri

The name Daiquiri is also the name of a beach near Santiago, Cuba, and an iron mine in that area, and it is a word of Taíno origin. The cocktail was supposedly invented about 1900 in a bar named Venus in Santiago, about 23 miles east of the mine, by a group of American mining engineers. Among the engineers present were Jennings Cox, General Manager of the Spanish American Iron Co., J. Francis Linthicum, C. Manning Combs, George W. Pfeiffer, De Berneire Whitaker, C. Merritt Holmes and Proctor O. Persing. Cox invented the drink when he ran out of gin while entertaining American guests, the drink evolved naturally due to the prevalence of lime and sugar.

Originally the drink was served in a tall glass packed with cracked ice. A teaspoon of sugar was poured over the ice and the juice of one or two limes was squeezed over the sugar. Two or three ounces of rum completed the mixture. The glass was then frosted by stirring with a long-handled spoon.

The Singapore Sling

The Singapore Sling is a cocktail that was developed sometime before 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon, a bartender working at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel Singapore. The original recipe used gin, Cherry Heering, Bénédictine, and fresh pineapple juice, primarily from Sarawak pineapples which enhance the flavour and create a foamy top.

Most recipes substitute bottled pineapple juice for fresh juice; soda water has to be added for foam. The hotel's recipe was recreated based on the memories of former bartenders and written notes that they were able to discover regarding the original recipe. One of the scribbled recipes is still on display at the Raffles Hotel Museum.

The Bloody Mary

While the Bloody Mary's origin is unclear. Fernand Petiot claimed to have invented the drink in 1921 while working at the New York Bar, which later became Harry's New York Bar, a frequent Paris hangout for Ernest Hemingway and other American expatriates. Another tradition maintains that actor George Jessel created the drink around 1939. In 1939, Lucius Beebe printed in his gossip column "This New York" one of the earliest U.S. references to this drink, along with the original recipe: "George Jessel’s newest pick-me-up which is receiving attention from the town is called a Bloody Mary: half tomato juice, half vodka."

Fernand Petiot seemed to corroborate Jessel's claim when the bartender stated to The New Yorker magazine in July 1964:

"I initiated the Bloody Mary of today," he told us. "Jessel said he created it, but it was really nothing but vodka and tomato juice when I took it over. I cover the bottom of the shaker with four large dashes of salt, two dashes of black pepper, two dashes of cayenne pepper, and a layer of Worcestershire sauce; I then add a dash of lemon juice and some cracked ice, put in two ounces of vodka and two ounces of thick tomato juice, shake, strain, and pour. We serve a hundred to a hundred and fifty Bloody Marys a day here in the King Cole Room and in the other restaurants and the banquet rooms."

The Old Fashioned

The first alleged use of the specific name "Old Fashioned" was for a Bourbon whiskey cocktail in the 1880s, at the Pendennis Club, a gentlemen’s club in Louisville, Kentucky. The recipe is said to have been invented by a bartender at that club, and popularized by a club member and bourbon distiller, Colonel James E. Pepper, who brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City. The "Old Fashioned" was the favorite cocktail of President Harry S Truman and his wife Bess.