The last day of the X-mas Countdown is the best day. All the prints are 20% off, not only the cocktails, islands and fabulous architecture featured these last 24 days but also all other prints featured at mobilita.se/shop.
Please let me know what cocktails, long drinks, fizzes, cups, rickeys or other drinks I should make next or if you have any favorite glasses I have overlooked thus far.
Have an Absolutely Fabulous and Happy Holiday!
The first Alexander was made with gin, not brandy and is said to have been created by Troy Alexander while working as a bartender at famed New York City restaurant Rector’s operating from 1899 to 1919. It was made celebrating the fictional character Pheobe Snow, a beautiful woman all dressed in white promoting the use of clean-burning coal on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. Mr Alexander wanted to make a white cocktail to fit the character. Interestingly one of the ads featuring Phoebe Snow promoted that the railway line could take you to Scranton, Joe Biden’s home town.
The recipe was first printed in “Recipes for Mixed Drinks” by Hugo Ensslin in 1915.
When Henry George Charles Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood, and Princess Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary, daughter of King George V and Queen Mary got married in London in 1922 the gin in the Alexander was replaced with brandy in honor of the event.
The glass, Theme Formal, was designed in 1965 by Russel Wright.
1111 Lincoln Road is an office, retail space, residential building and a parking garage all under one roof. The building is situated at the corner of Lincoln Road and Alton Road in the South Beach section of Miami Beach, Florida. It is a perfect location with Lincoln Road being one of the busiest shopping destinations in Miami Beach. 1111 Lincoln Road was designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Jacques Herzog has described the building as a reinterpretation of the essence of Tropical Modernism. The building was completed in 2010.
The cocktail isn’t actually named after the borough itself but rather after the Zoological Park. The Bronx Zoo opened in 1899 and the story goes that either John “Curly” O’Connor, head barman at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria or Johnny Solon from the same bar, created the Bronx cocktail inspired by the novel zoo in 1899 or 1900. That said, many other bartenders have also taken credit for the cocktail.
The first time the Bronx cocktail was mentioned in print was in The Virginia Enterprise in February of 1901 where credit for the invention was given to John “Curly” O’Connor. Johnny Solon on the other hand claimed the cocktail as his own in the book The Old Waldorf-Astoria from 1935.
The cocktail glass is one in a series of glasses called Calci Milanesi, inspired by Milanese architecture, and was designed by Agustina Bottoni in 2018.
More popular in Mexico than the Margarita the Paloma, meaning dove in Spanish, might have gotten its name from a popular Mexican folk song from the 1860’s even though it was created almost 100 years after the song.
Squirt, the first grapefruit soda and commonly used in Palomas, was created in Phoenix, Arizona in 1938. It was advertised as a great mixer with tequila in 1950 but wasn’t actually exported to Mexico until 1955 so the cocktail probably saw the light of day sometime in the 1950s. It might have been the creation of Don Javier Delgado Corona the then owner and bartender at La Capilla in Tequila, Mexico.
The Stacking Glass was designed in 1951 by the Finnish designer Saara Hopea.
In 1957 a representative of the Bols distillery walked into the bar at the Kaiser Hawaiian Village (now the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Resort) in Honolulu. Aiming to boost his sales he asked the bartender Harry K. Yee to create a cocktail featuring Bols Blue Curaçao. Mr Yee tried several variations before settling on vodka, rum, blue curaçao, pineapple juice and sweet-and-sour mix.
Mr Yee named the drink after the classic Bing Crosby song Blue Hawaii from his 1937 film Waikiki Wedding, putting Hawaii on the cocktail map two years before gaining statehood.
Even though Mr Yee’s recipe calls for sweet-and-sour mix the drink is vastly improved by making your own by mixing equal parts lime juice, lemon juice and sugar syrup.
The glass called Billie was designed by the Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester in 2019. Ann Demeulemeester is one of the famous Antwerp Six in the fashion industry.
The Singapore Sling, by many regarded as the national drink of Singapore, was created at the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel by the bartender Mr Ngiam Tong Boon. It was first made sometime between 1899 when Mr Boon started working at the hotel and 1915 when he died traveling back to his native China. At the time etiquette stated that ladies should not consume alcohol in a public setting and instead had to make do with fruit juices. This gave Mr Boon the idea to create a drink that looked like juice but was infused with gin and spirits, finally making it possible for women to have a cocktail at Raffles.
The landmark Raffles Hotel was built in 1886 and was soon to become a favorite hangout for Singapore’s upper-class as well as famous travelers such as Rudyard Kipling, W. Somerset Maugham, Charlie Chaplin and also Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II.
The original recipe was lost in 1930 but when the drink was published in the Savoy Cocktail Book the same year there are two different recipes for Slings from Singapore. One regular Singapore Sling and one called Straights Sling (after the British colony Straights Settlements). As it happens, the most commonly used recipe today is closer to the Straights version.
The glass was designed by Makoto Komatsu in 1980 and is called Crumple.
This is an old one. It was first published in The Bartender’s Guide by Jerry Thomas in 1862 but the concept of the sour was known and loved for over a century prior to that. During the 18th Century sea travel, especially from Europe to America, was an ordeal with malnutrition and scurvy taking its toll on the sailors. Thanks to Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon, The British Royal Navy started to mix lemon or lime with rum and water to stave off scurvy and so the sour was born, one of the oldest types of cocktails. From there it was only a matter of time before someone started to make a sour with American whiskey and made it what it is today.
The Whiskey Sour is traditionally made with whiskey, lemon juice, sugar and egg white, an ingredient that will smooth out the tartness of the lemon juice. Today the egg white is optional and you often find bars serving the Whiskey Sour without it.
On a side note, calling a spirit diluted with water a grog is also because of Vice-Admiral Vernon. He was known for wearing grogram coats giving him the nickname ”Old Grog”.
The glass called Dondolino was designed by Setsu & Shinobu Ito in 2016 and is painted using a technique with Japanese lacquer called Urushi, generally applied on wood.
The origins of the Saketini cocktail are not clear. It is said to have been invented by Matsuda San, a chef from Queens who introduced the drink at the New York World’s Fair in 1964.
After the World’s Fair the recipe for the Saketini was lost and the cocktail led an all but forgotten life until the -tini craze in the 1990s. Even though the Saketini was invented long before this the cocktail historian David Wondrich still puts the Saketini (maybe a but unfairly) in ”that sickly and dismal tribe” of chocolate martinis, mango martinis, and appletinis.
Another possible origin story is that the Saketini was invented at the first Benihana restaurant on West 56th Street in New York City. Benihana was founded by 25-year old Hiroaki Aoki the same year as the World’s Fair, 1964, and the cocktail is said to first having been made that same year.
The sake cup was designed in 1958 by Japanese glassware designer Masakichi Awashima.
In 1956 an international design competition was held for the Sydney Opera House. From the 233 submitted entries, representing architects from 32 countries, the Danish architect Jørn Utzon was announced the winner receiving 5,000 Australian pounds for his design. Legend has it that Utzon’s design was rescued by Finnish-American architect and designer Eero Saarinen from a pile of rejected entries.
The construction was expected to take four years and cost $7 million. Instead it took 14 years, involving 10,000 construction workers and ended up costing a then whopping $102 million. It finally opened it’s doors to the public on 20 October 1973.
The building comprises multiple performance venues, which together host well over 1,500 performances annually (on a regular year) and is visited by more than 1.2 million people. As one of the most popular visitor attractions in Australia, the site is visited by more than 10.9 million people annually.
The Cosmopolitan is said to have been invented in 1985 by Miami bartender Cheryl Cook at a South Beach bar called the Strand. Wanting to make a perfect cocktail for a Martini glass Cook used the Kamikaze as a base, changed the regular vodka to citrus-flavored vodka and added a splash of cranberry juice.
Others believe it was first invented by Toby Cecchini in 1988 when he was working at New York’s Odeon. Cecchini used Absolut Citron, the second of the range of flavored vodkas from Absolut and released in 1988, and made it a big hit in the New York bar scene. With the help of the characters in Sex and the City, where the Cosmo was almost an essential part of the plot, the Cosmopolitan turned into a modern classic.
The glass is called Margot and was designed by Felicia Ferrone in 2013.
The Champagne Cocktail was referenced as early as in 1855 in a book by Robert Tomes called “Panama in 1855”. It made it into the first ever cocktailbook in 1862 when it appeared in Jerry Thomas’s book “The Bar Tenders Guide” . Jerry Thomas is considered by many to be the father of American mixology.
Champagne cocktails were mentioned by Mark Twain in 1869 in his book Innocents Abroad but was surely drunk long before that. This version, also called Maharajah’s Burra-Peg (burra meaning big or important in hindi and peg being old British slang for drink) is taken from Charles H. Baker’s book The Gentleman’s Companion from 1939.
Even though this cocktail remains at true classic it definitely has its detractors. David Embury, famous for his book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks called the cocktail “a decidedly inferior drink” and “an incongruous mess” that no true lover of Champagne should ever try. Just the thought of polluting Champagne with sugar and bitters was sacrilegious to him.
The Tulip glass was designed by Nils Landberg for the Swedish company Orrefors in 1957.
The caffè latte has been known by different names throughout Europe since the 17th century. It was first mentioned in print in 1867 by William Dean Howell in his book “Italian Journeys” and was served in regions frequented by Americans. In the 1950s it appeared on menus in Berkeley, California and via Seattle in the 1980s the caffè latte made it back to Europe.
The cup is called Landscape and was designed in 2008 by Patricia Urquiola for Rosenthal.
The history of the Mai Tai is a story of the two most influential people in the world of tiki bars. Victor Jules Bergeron (aka Trader Vic) and Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt (aka Donn Beach, aka Don the Beachcomber). Donn Beach opened his first South Pacific style restaurant in Hollywood in 1933. He was a rum connoisseur and started making exotic rum drinks inspired by his many travels.
Trader Vic had his own restaurant called Hinky Dinks that he opened in 1934 in Oakland, California. After a trip to Cuba to refine his bartender skills and learn more about the world of rum, and possibly after visiting Don the Beachcomber, the Trader remodeled Hinky Dinks into a Polynesian-style tiki bar and changed the name to Trader Vic’s. This made it the first in a long line of restaurants around the world.
The Mai Tai was first made in 1944 for a couple of Tahitian friends of the Trader. They liked it so much that they exclaimed “Mai Tai-Roa A’e” meaning “Out of this world, the best” so the name of the cocktail was right there.
Trader Vic and Don the Beachcomber fought over who had invented the Mai Tai for the better part of their careers but when Donn Beach launched his own Mai Tai mixer claiming the drink to be his invention the Trader had enough. Donn was sued and lost the court battle. Trader Vic announced “Anybody who says I didn't create this drink is a dirty stinker”.
It is most likely though that Trader Vic got his inspiration from Donn Beach’s Hollywood restaurant so without Donn we probably wouldn’t have the Mai Tai.
The glass was designed by Marco Zanuso in 1969 and is called Pitagora after its triangular base.
The Caribbean island of Barbados in the Lesser Antilles is the most eastern of all Caribbean islands. According to archeological findings the first settlers or visitors to Barbados may have landed on the island in 1600 BC. A more permanent Amerindian settlement was established around the 4th to 7th centuries AD. Barbados was populated by the Kalinago people since the 13th century.
Spanish navigators claimed the island for the Spanish Crown in the 15th century and it first appeared on maps in 1511. After the Spanish the Portuguese took it over in the 1530s until they gave way for the English when they arrived in Barbados in 1625 and later made it into a British colony. Even after the islands declaration of independence in 1966 it was actually part of the British Commonwealth until December 1st 2021 when Barbados transitioned to a republic and thus removed Queen Elizabeth as head of state.
Barbados is also the birthplace of rum. Mount Gay is the oldest operating rum distillery in the world and was founded in 1703. Thanks to its almost perfect conditions for growing sugar cane and the fact that its limestone bedrock is a fantastic filter for rainwater Barbados was almost destined to become a great rum producer.
Rum aside, Barbados is famous for its green monkeys, flying fish, fish fries and, of course, Rihanna who in November 2021 was named national hero and received the title, the Right Excellent Robyn Rihanna Fenty.
Barbados is the only Caribbean island (and one of only four countries) to have had regular Concorde service. The route from London to Barbados was kept from 1987 until 2003. The flight took only three hours and 45 minutes instead of almost 9 hours.
The Hurricane is another true classic of New Orleans even though there is said to have been a cocktail called Hurricane served at the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Queens. Little is known about this version apart from it probably being made with rum and that it was served in a hurricane glass.
The second time a cocktail called Hurricane saw the light of day was at Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans during the 1940s. This is the version that is still served today and it came into being out of necessity. During and after WWII Scotch and Bourbon were hard to come by but New Orleans had rum arriving from the Caribbean by the boatload. The spirits distributors thought up a clever way to deal with this. They required the bars to buy several cases of rum with each case of Scotch. This left Pat 0’Brien’s with more rum than they knew what to do with. Benson “Pat” O’Brien and his partner Charlie Cantrell, probably together with their head bartender Louis Culligan, decided to create a new cocktail to help use up the excess cases of rum. A potent cocktail with 4 oz (120 ml) rum.
The hurricane glass, giving the cocktail its name, is modeled after the classic hurricane lantern. This glass is called Riflesso and was designed by Isabel Antonia Giampietro in 1958.
The Martini is likely to be a descendant of the Martinez, a cocktail first appearing in the 1860s at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco. Exactly when the Martini was invented though is impossible to say.
The first published recipe for a cocktail named Martini was in 1888. This version was essentially the same cocktail as the then already established Marguerite, made with equal parts Old Tom Gin (sweeter than the London Dry Gin), Vermouth, sugar syrup and a hint of Orange Curaçao and orange bitters.
Over the years the Martini became increasingly dry with the London Dry Gin taking over from the Old Tom and the bar goers starting to favor Dry Vermouth (also called French Vermouth) over the sweet one. At the turn of the 19th century Martini & Rossi started marketing a Dry Vermouth on the American market with the tag line “It’s not a Martini unless you use Martini”.
Today a Martini, or Dry Martini, can mean anything from a 1:5 ratio to a 1:32 ratio or even just a quick Vermouth spray with an atomizer on the inside of the glass before pouring ice cold gin.
When ordering a Martini it might be good to know that James Bond’s catchphrase “Shaken, not stirred” will render the cocktail cooler than stirring it but the reason a bartender will, almost by default, stir it instead is that this way you will achieve a less cloudy Martini without shards is ice floating on the surface.
The glass is called Delta and was designed by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec for Alessi to be used on Delta Airlines.
The Canadian distiller the Seagram Company announced plans for its new headquarters in 1954 designed by Periera & Gluckman. The plans were however rejected after Phyllis Lambert’s objection. She was the director of planning and the daughter of Seagram’s owner Samuel Bronfman. Her masterstroke was to choose Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe as the architect instead with Philip Johnson designing the interiors.
The Seagram Building sits on 375 Park Avenue, between East 52nd and 53rd Streets in Midtown Manhattan, New York City and stands 515 feet (157 m) tall with 38 stories. The construction began in 1955 and was completed in 1958.
When designing the Seagram Building, Mies van der Rohe made a bold move to create a pink granite plaza in front of the building. Complete with two large fountains the plaza leads into the floor to ceiling glass lobby that erases the boarder between interior and exterior.
The Seagram Building was used as a model for several neighboring buildings and is still today a great example of the International Style New York skyscraper.
Until 2019 the Seagram Building housed the iconic restaurant the Four Seasons with its two separate sections the Grill Room and the Pool Room, both designed by Philip Johnson.
Espresso is not a bean, blend or roasting method, it is a method of preparation. The first single-shot espresso machine was made by Luigi Bezzerra in 1901. It was enhanced by Desiderio Pavoni in 1903 but not until after WWII the espresso with crema was born. This was thanks to a Milanese café owner called Achille Gaggia who found a way to increase the water pressure from 2 to 8 bars.
The espresso cup is called Coffee & Cigarettes and was designed by Carlo Trevisani in 2006.
A little bit lesser known than the Margarita or the Paloma the El Diablo is still a classic tequila cocktail.
Originally it was called Mexican El Diablo it was created by Victor Bergeron and first printed in his “Trader Vic’s Book of Food and Drink” in 1946. 22 years later in “Trader Vic’s Pacific Island Cookbook” the name was shortened to El Diablo, the name that is most often used today.
The original recipe calls for ginger ale but at the time ginger ale was spicier than most versions today and was closer to a modern day ginger beer.
The glass called Ginette was designed by Kenji Matsuura for Sugahara in 2010.
