The last day of the X-mas Countdown is the best day. All the prints are 20% off, not only the cocktails featured these last 24 days but also two more, the classics Satan’s Whiskers and the Daiquiri. Please tell me what cocktails, long drinks, fizzes, cups, Rickeys or other I should make next or if you have any favorite glasses I have overlooked thus far.
Have a Fabulous and Happy Holidays!
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 cocktail was so popular with John Lennon he called it his milkshake.
The glass, Theme Formal, was designed in 1965 by Russel Wright.
The Bellini was created in 1948 by Giuseppe Cipriani at the world famous Harry’s Bar in Venice. The drink was named Bellini because its pink color reminded Cipriani of the toga of a saint in a painting by 15th-century Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini. Harry’s Bar first opened in Venice in 1931 and was a favorite hangout for Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, and Orson Welles. In 2001 Harry’s Bar was declared a national landmark by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Affairs.
The Jellies Family Flute was designed by Patricia Urquiola in 2014 for Kartell.
In 1806 an English clipper commandeered by James Gosling was bound for Virginia. Unfortunately the wind was too still so the ship headed towards Bermuda instead and this is where James Gosling decided to stay. There, coming from a family of spirit makers, he created Gosling’s Black Rum. That paired with ginger beer, also made on the island, made for a perfectly refreshing drink. Legend has it a sailor commented the drink looked like “the color of a cloud only a fool or a dead man would sail under” and so the name was set. Technically, it isn’t a Dark and Stormy if it is not made with Gosling’s Black Seal Rum.
The glass called Spring was designed by Jørn Utzon, the architect behind the Sydney Opera House, after a meeting with Frank Lloyd Wright.
Claimed to be the original cocktail the Sazerac was created in New Orleans in 1838 by an apothecary named Antoine Peychaud. He mixed up cognac, absinthe and his own herbal remedy he dubbed Peychaud's Bitters and served it in an egg shaped cup, in French called a coquetier. The Americans started calling the cup a cocktay and hence the word cocktail was born. The cognac Peychaud originally used was Sazerac de Forge & Fils but by 1870 the cognac was substituted for rye whiskey. In 2008 the Sazerac was voted New Orleans official cocktail.
The Revolution glass was designed by Felicia Ferrone in 2001.
The Martinez is sometimes called the missing link between the Manhattan and the Martini. It first appeared 1884 in OH Byron’s Modern Bartender’s Guide. A few years later in 1887 the legendary bartender Jerry Thomas made the recipe into what it is today. The story goes that Thomas made it for a customer traveling to the city of Martinez, California. To make this classic it is preferable to use Old Tom gin, a type of gin that is something in between Dutch genever and London dry gin.
The Coupe glass was designed by Felicia Ferrone in 2018.
The history of the Toddy dates all the way back to British-controlled India in the early 17th century. The Hindi word ”taddy” meant “beverage made from fermented palm sap”. By 1786 the Brits had changed the official meaning of taddy and defined it as “beverage made of alcoholic liquor with hot water, sugar, and spices”. The British claimed it as their own and started serving it in pubs during the winter months using Scotch whisky, hot water and exotic spices from India.
Another origin story tells of a 19th-century Irish physician named Dr. Robert Bentley Todd who used to prescribe his patients a mix of brandy, cinnamon, sugar and hot water, making it a Toddy. In an article in the Burlington Free Press in 1837 about ”How to Take Cold” made out the hot toddy to be a cure-all but even though we all know that a cure-all is really a cure-nothing a hot toddy is still a fabulous drink on a cold winter day.
The Form 2000 cup was designed in 1954 by design legend Raymond Loewy for Rosenthal.
The Negroni Sbagliato was created in 1972 when Mirko Stocchetto at Bar Basso in Milan added sparkling wine instead of gin by mistake in a Negroni. A little lighter than a regular Negroni and close to the Spritz Veneziano. Now, almost 50 years later it is a classic in its own right.
The X-series glass was designed by Finnish designer Tamara Aladin in 1961.
Milano–Torino. As with a lot of older cocktails the origin is unknown and there are several different origin stories. The same goes for Milano-Torino. One story is that it was first served at Gaspare Campari’s Caffè Camparino in Milan in the 1860’s. Another that it was created in 1932 to celebrate the inauguration of the A4 Highway that connects Milano and Torino. Whatever the origin it is made with equal parts Campari from Milano and Punt e Mes from Torino.
The glass is one in a series of three glasses called Calci Milanesi and was designed by Agostina Bottoni in 2018 as a tribute to Milanese architecture.
The Spritz Veneziano, also known as Aperol Spritz, originated around the 19th century in Venice. The Hapsburg soldiers that occupied the area thought the Venetian wines were too strong in alcohol so they started adding a spritz of water to the wine. At the turn of the nineteenth century, soda water was added instead of water and during the 1920s and 1930s a bitter was included, making it a real cocktail. Not until the 1990s Prosecco was finally added to the Spritz Veneziano.
The glass, called Smoke, was designed by Joe Colombo in 1964 and was made to make it easier to hold your cigarette and your glass in the same hand.
One of the origin stories of El Presidente is that it was created by the American bartender Eddie Woelke who worked at the Jockey Club in Havanna during the Prohibition. He made it in honor of Mario García Menocal, president of Cuba from 1913 to 1921. It was originally made with equal parts rum, French vermouth and a bar spoon of grenadine. Legend has it that when president Gerardo Machado took over in 1925 he demanded his own version and so a bar spoon of Curaçao was added to the cocktail.
The glass was designed by Misa Tanaka in 2009 and is a combination of glass and ceramics.
The Black Velvet was first served in 1861 as a tribute to Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, after his death of typhoid fever on December 14. It was created after a steward at Brook’s Club in London ordered that even Champagne should be in mourning, dressed in all black.
The Fujiyama glass was designed by Keita Suzuki in 2012 and made at the Japanese glassworks Sugahara. The design is inspired by Mount Fuji and when used for beer the head will form a snowy top on the mountain.
The Shirley Temple is possibly the most famous non-alcoholic cocktail ever made. There are different stories as to where it was created but the reason is said to be that the child actor Shirley Temple was complaining over her parents sipping their Old-fashioneds so the bartender created her a version of the drink with a Maraschino cherry, just like her parents’s cocktail. Here served in a glass designed by the Swedish designer Bengt Orup, Strikt from 1953.
The Aviation was invented by Hugo Ensslin and made its first appearance in his self-published book ”Recipes for Mixed Drinks” in 1916. Originally the cocktail included crème de violette alongside Maraschino liqueur but being hard to come by (and the fact that many found it tasting like hand soap) the violet liqueur was omitted in the classic Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930.
The cocktail glass Sferico was designed in 1968 by the Italian designer Joe Colombo who also made the Smoke glass.
The Manhattan is one of the very first cocktails that called for vermouth, and was invented before the Martini, the Rob Roy and the Martinez. One story is that it was created at the Manhattan Club at a party arranged by Lady Randolph Churchill in 1874. This, however is not very likely since she at the time of the party was at home in London giving birth to Winston Churchill. Another account was written by a New York bartender, William F. Mulhall, working at the Hoffman House in NY from the 1880’s. He wrote “The Manhattan cocktail was invented by a man named Black, who kept a place ten doors below Houston Street on Broadway in the eighteen-sixties—probably the most famous drink in the world in its time.”.
The glass was designed in 2003 by the American designer Alissia Melka-Teichroew.
The Americano is not only a precursor of the Negroni (that was created for Count Camillo Negroni who wanted something more potent than the classic Americano). It was actually the very first drink that James Bond ever ordered. (It wasn't a Vesper). This was in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale from 1953.
The Cibi glass was designed by Italian architect and designer Cini Boeri in 1973 and was considered so futuristic it was featured in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner from 1982.
Sometime around 1880 the Old Fashioned as we know it today is said to have been invented at The Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky by James E. Pepper, bartender and bourbon maker. He then brought the recipe to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City.
The glass, Kartio, was designed in 1958 by Finnish designer Kaj Franck.
The French ”75” cocktail got it’s name from the 75-millimeter field gun used by the French military during WWI. It was probably created at Henry’s Bar in Paris by Henry Tépé in 1914/15 or even earlier and was originally called ”Soixante-Quinze” (Seventy-Five) since both the drink and the field gun would knock you out flat.
The Paro glass was designed by Achille Castiglioni in 1983.
The cocktail Between the Sheets is another cocktail that originated at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. It was created by Harry MacElhone in the early 1930s and is basically a Sidecar with the addition of rum.
The Mount Rainier glass was designed by Nic Ramirez, Matt & Leigh Capozzi in 2015 as a tribute to the tallest mountain in Washington State.
The drink Bloody Mary was probably invented by a bartender named Fernand “Pete” Petiot, who created his first version in the early 1920s at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. After Prohibition, Petiot moved to New York where he presided over the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel. While at St. Regis, he enhanced the drink with horseradish, Tabasco, lemon juice and celery salt.
The glass, Slow Fox, was designed by the Swedish designer Ingegerd Råman in 2000.
